


Phantoms in the Early Dark

by greenapricot



Series: Phantoms in the Early Dark [1]
Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, casefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-05 16:49:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13392066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenapricot/pseuds/greenapricot
Summary: “Eldridge,” Hathaway echoes, looking thoughtful and suddenly more alert.“You know her?” Robbie asks.Hathaway shakes his head, looking away across the river, the corners of his mouth turned down. Robbie’s seen that look before and he doesn’t relish revisiting either of the cases that elicited it.





	1. Monday early morning

**Author's Note:**

> I started this as a fill for the 2016 Lewis Summer Challenge, inspired by [this prompt](http://lewis-challenge.livejournal.com/147961.html?thread=1289721#t1289721) by wendymr. But the story kept expanding and I quickly realized there was no way I'd be able to finish it to my own satisfaction within the challenge time frame. So, I wrote something else for the challenge and figured I'd post this in the fall. Then it expanded more, and again, and here it is, a year and a half later, the longest thing I've ever written. I am both pleased and amazed with myself for having followed through.
> 
> It takes place sometime after S6, and is ten chapters and about 34k words. It's all written, just some minor editing and obsessive tweaking still to be done. Chapters will be posted every week or so.
> 
> A million million thanks Jack for the beta, Britpick, encouragement, and pointing out of the many places where things didn't make sense. All remaining wonkiness is purely my own as I've poked at it quite a bit since they last saw it. And thanks also to everyone on Tumblr who has left me encouraging comments every time I mentioned I was still working on 'the casefic'.
> 
> Title from the Mountain Goats song Maybe Sprout Wings.

The second call comes right on the heels of the first. This time it’s Hathaway, likely to relay some piece of information Dispatch missed. Robbie fumbles the phone out of his jacket pocket with sleep-slow fingers and answers while grabbing his keys and anorak and heading out the door. He’s getting too bloody old for this bloody hour. 

“Are you still at your flat, sir?” James asks down the line. 

“Aye. Just heading out now.”

There’s a pause as if Hathaway is thinking something over. “Could you swing by mine on the way? I’ve got a tyre puncture.”

“Another one?” Robbie says, putting the key in the ignition. “You been driving off-road in your spare time?” 

“Not to the best of my knowledge, sir.”

“I’ll be there in ten,” Robbie says.

“Thank you. I owe you.”

“Ah, you’d do the same for me,” Robbie replies but Hathaway has already rung off.

When Robbie pulls up in front of his flat Hathaway is standing on the pavement in the pre-dawn drizzle, cigarette in hand, looking cold and miserable. He steps off the kerb and pulls the door open before the car has come to a complete stop. Cold air and the scent of rotting leaves and cigarette smoke wafts in as he settles himself stiffly into the passenger seat. 

Hathaway does not look like he took Robbie’s admonishment when they parted ways Friday evening, to get some proper rest over the weekend, to heart. He looks like he paid it absolutely no heed at all. The dark circles under his eyes, which have been growing over the last week, are larger even than the early callout could account for. 

“What happened to you?” Robbie eyes the plasters on Hathaway’s hands and the way he is sitting stiffly upright in his seat as if slouching would be painful. 

“Feeding a neighbour’s cat,” Hathaway says. 

“The cat beat you up?”

“Just a few scratches.”

“And your ribs?”

“Slipped on the walk. Don’t we have a dead body to get to?”

“It’ll keep for a minute.”

“I’m fine,” Hathaway says staring straight ahead through the rain-streaked windscreen, a slight twitch in his jaw.

“Sure,” Robbie says. “I can tell by the way your side is so stiff you could barely bend to get into the car. You look done in.”

“It’s barely six am, it’s the second time I’ve tried to go to work only to find I’ve got a puncture, I’ve got a gig tomorrow night and yesterday’s rehearsal went terribly because of my fingers, I slipped and fell outside my front door yesterday and landed on the bloody garden wall. I’m beyond annoyed, but I’m fine. Can we please go look at that dead body now, or shall I get a bus like I did Friday?”

“I’m sorry, lad.”

“Thank you,” Hathaway says, tone nothing like gracious. He turns to contemplate the dark world through the windscreen, plaster covered fingers tapping arhythmically against his knee. 

“Right.” Robbie pulls away from the kerb, keeping half an eye on Hathaway as he drives. He’s making an effort to look relaxed, but he’s not fooling anyone, least of all Robbie. He doesn’t miss the fact that Hathaway winces every time the car hits a bump.

* * *

Hathaway stifles a groan as he gets out of the car, his first few strides stiff, but by the time they’ve made it along the Meadow Walk to the bridge and over to the boathouses his gait is almost normal again. The sky is just beginning to lighten as they walk, cold mist rising off the river and shrouding them as they go.

SOCO and Laura are already on the scene, their floodlights circles of warmth in the cold grey dawn. The body of a young woman with dark hair is slumped against the back wall of the Queen’s College boathouse. She could be sleeping if it weren’t for the dark patch of blood on the wall behind her head. A woman in workout kit is stood near the front of the building talking to PC Lockhart, blanket over her shoulders and both hands wrapped around a takeaway cup. Laura stands up from her crouch by the body as they come over. 

“Lovely way to start the week,” Laura says by way of greeting.

“Here’s hoping it’s not a sign of things to come,” Robbie says. “What have we got?” 

“Single blow to the back of the head,” Laura says. 

Robbie eyes Hathaway and the wince he fails to conceal as they crouch over the body. Laura turns the victim’s head and holds her hair aside so they can see it is matted with blood underneath. 

“Likely caused by hitting her head against that section of railing.” Laura leans around the corner of the building and points to a spot where SOCO has marked a darker patch of the grey railing, about halfway up the stairs to the balcony. There is an intermittent trail of blood smears leading from the stairs to the body as if someone ran bloody fingers along the side of the building.

“Accidental?”

“Possibly. Falling and being pushed look about the same once you’re on the ground.” Laura looks up the stairs and then back at Robbie. “Those metal stairs would have been slippery in last night’s rain. If she was on her way up she could have slipped and fallen backwards, hitting her head on the railing. Or she could have been pushed. I’ll know more after the post-mortem.”

“Time of death?”

“Sometime between midnight and four am.”

“And the head wound is the cause of death?” 

“I can’t be sure. There is a lot of blood, but there will be with a head wound of this type.” 

Hathaway stands with another stifled groan and walks over to examine the railing, looking back and forth between it and the corner where the body is. “She slips on the stairs and hits her head, then walks down the rest of the steps and around the corner of the building where she leans against the wall and never gets up again?”

“That would fit with the amount of blood on the wall and the railing.”

“If she slipped, what was she doing out here by herself in the rain between midnight and four am?” 

“That’s your job, isn’t it?” Laura says with a grin. 

Hathaway doesn’t reply with a witty rejoinder, only grimaces again and walks back toward the body, crouching down next to it. A sure sign that all his talk of being fine is nothing but talk. 

“The contents of her purse seem to be intact,” Laura continues. “Phone, wallet still containing cash and credit cards. If something’s missing it’s not obvious at first glance.”

“Unlikely to be a robbery gone wrong, then,” Hathaway mutters, wincing as he straightens up.

“According to the Merton College ID in her wallet,” Laura says, “her name is Hannah Eldridge.”

“Eldridge,” Hathaway echoes, looking thoughtful and suddenly more alert.

“You know her?” Robbie asks.

Hathaway shakes his head, looking away across the river, the corners of his mouth turned down. Robbie’s seen that look before and he doesn’t relish revisiting either of the cases that elicited it.

“Merton,” Hathaway says, after a beat, turning back to Robbie, expression neutral once again. “Their boathouse is down the other end of the island. What was she doing up here?”

“And what was she doing here at all in the middle of the night?” Robbie replies.

Robbie turns back to Laura. She gives him a quizzical look.

“Call over to Merton and find out who her next of kin are,” Robbie says to Hathaway in lieu of asking if he’s all right again. Hathaway nods, pulling out his phone as he starts back toward the path.

Laura stops next to Robbie as he watches Hathaway go. “Is he all right?” she asks. “Those ribs look painful.”

“Said he slipped on the walk yesterday. Says he’s fine.”

Laura purses her lips. “And you believe him?”

Robbie shakes his head. “Not really, no. But he won’t let on, will he?”

Laura gives him a sympathetic look. “Good luck,” she says.

“Thanks,” Robbie says with a wry smile and goes to talk with the woman who found the body. 

The Queen’s College crew captain is short, redheaded, and unwavering in her statement, telling Robbie the same thing she told PC Lockhart. She came down to the boathouse early, as usual, to unlock and prepare for practice. When she realised the dark shape she’d seen at the back of the building was a person she asked if they needed help, and when she touched them, thinking they were maybe asleep, she knew something was really wrong and called 999. She didn’t see anyone else on her way to the boathouse save an early jogger along the Meadow Walk and no one else on Boathouse island. 

Robbie thanks her for her help, gives her his card in case she thinks of anything else and follows Hathaway to the car.

* * *

Hannah Eldridge was an only child, parents on a seemingly permanent holiday in the Himalayan foothills of India. They’re off the grid according to the butler and manager of their Oxford estate. News that the daughter of his employer has been found dead doesn’t elicit any sense of urgency in the man to get in touch with her parents.

“It is a deliberate lifestyle decision on their part,” he tells them. “They feel the modern world and its too ready communication is to be their downfall lest they break free of it. There was no possibility of doing that here.”

Robbie exchanges a look with Hathaway. 

“There must be an emergency number,” Hathaway says. “Some member of the staff over there who could be contacted.”

“They brought no staff with them, and if they hired any in India I am sure I have no idea who they are. I am sorry,” he continues, in a tone that is the farthest thing from apologetic, “but short of travelling to India yourselves there is no reaching them until their return in three months time. It is by design.” And then he closes the door in their faces. Politely.

“What sort of parents leave the country for months without a way for their only child to contact them?” Robbie asks as they walk back to the car, gravel crunching under their feet.

* * *

There is a box containing Hannah’s purse and its contents waiting on Robbie’s desk when they return to the nick. Hathaway hangs his coat on the back of the door and picks up the box without a word, carrying it over to his desk and laying each bagged item out in front of him: phone, small notebook, mascara, assorted pens, liquid eyeliner, keys, gum, mints, headphones, a small bottle of paracetamol, a pair of gloves, a glasses case, and the last bag containing what looks like two smaller empty resealable bags. Robbie hangs up his anorak and switches on his computer, watching Hathaway while he waits.

Hathaway is favouring his left side and trying not to show it. His lips are pressed together in a thin line, jaw clenched. Someone who doesn’t spend as much time with him as Robbie might mistake the look for concentration, but he’s going to have to get up even earlier than today’s callout to fool Robbie.

Everything laid out, Hathaway picks up the bag containing Hannah’s phone, ripping it open and sliding out the phone, which looks very much like Hathaway’s own sleek black model. 

“Ha!” Hathaway says. “No passcode.” His fingers are already flying across the screen even as he mumbles about the stupidity of not securing one’s phone. 

But there is no entry in the contacts for Hannah’s parents or any other Eldridge for that matter. Are her parents not only on semi-permanent holiday but also estranged? Hathaway finds no emails, no recent phone calls, no texts to suggest that she’d been in contact with her parents at all, even before they left the country. All of which, they agree, goes along with what the butler said about their lifestyle choices. Time to interview her professors and fellow students.

The Merton College porter directs them to the offices of Hannah’s chemistry professors and confirms that all fourth-year chemistry students live outside college in lodgings in Holywell Street. He somewhat reluctantly gives them the address when pressed.

Hannah was a brilliant chemist by all accounts from her professors; dedicated, poised to be top in her field. Each one of them gushes about her work—innovative, inspired, cutting edge and still an undergraduate—but none of them can shed much light on her personal life. She kept to herself, was always working except for the occasional outing with her Holywell flatmates. Chemistry, according to her professors, was what she lived for.

* * *

Robbie can hear music blaring all the way from the street as they approach the Holywell Street address. It takes four knocks before the racket shuts off and the door is yanked open to reveal a slightly dishevelled looking young woman with short brown hair and a book in her left hand, fingers between the pages to hold her place.

“What?” She couldn’t be telegraphing annoyance more if she tried.

“Is this the residence of Hannah Eldridge?” Robbie asks.

“Who wants to know?”

“DI Lewis, this is DS Hathaway,” Robbie says holding up his warrant card. She looks unimpressed. “And you are?”

She gives him an assessing look. “Fiona Marshall. Not that that’s any of your business.”

“May we come in?” Hathaway asks from behind him and she rolls her eyes and moves into the flat. The living room is scattered with the detritus of student life, books and clothes in haphazard piles on the floor, the chairs, coffee table, and even the kitchen table which Robbie can see through the open door over Fiona’s left shoulder.

“Sure. Why not?” Fiona says stepping back into the room to let them through the door. “It’s not like I’ve got revising to do or anything.”

“Fiona—” Robbie starts.

“Fi. Not even my professors call me Fiona.”

“Fi, when was the last time you saw Hannah?”

“Last night.”

“About what time?”

“I don’t know, eleven-ish until late? We were celebrating. Nobody was paying attention to the time.”

“Celebrating what?”

“Being alive? It’s just something we do now and then.”

“On a Sunday night?”

Fiona shrugs. “Yeah, there’s no fixed schedule, we just go out when we feel like it.” Her look turns sceptical. “What’s this about anyway? Why are you asking me about Hannah? This time of day she’s always down the lab, go talk to her yourself.”

“I’m afraid Hannah was found dead this morning,” Hathaway says without preamble.

“Oh,” Fiona says. She doesn’t move from where she’s standing by the sofa, fingers still between the pages of her book. Robbie is about to continue with the usual condolences when she schools her features and continues, tone more hostile than when she first opened the door. “What does that have to do with me?”

“If you were with her late last night you may be one of the last people to have seen her alive,” Robbie says. “Who else was with you?”

“Just the other fourth years.”

“Your flatmates?”

“Yes.”

“Are any of them in?” Hathaway asks.

“How would I know?”

“You live in the same house.”

“That doesn’t mean I watch their every move. We’re all in our final year, we’re in the lab more than here anyway.” 

“Do you mind if we have a look in Hannah’s room?” 

“Yeah, I mind,” Fiona says. “But I suppose you’re going to insist, so you might as well get on with it.”

“Thanks ever so,” Hathaway says. “Bedrooms on the first floor?”

“Second door on the left,” Fiona says waving her hand in the direction of the stairs before going back to her book and the open laptop sitting on the sofa cushions. The music starts up again before they reach the landing.

Hannah’s room is unremarkable in its contents save for what isn’t there: any sort of correspondence with her parents. Their initial search doesn’t turn up even one envelope with an Indian postmark, or any emails on her laptop that could be from her parents; not much of a surprise after what the butler said. Nor do they find anything to indicate who besides her parents could be considered next of kin. 

The most interesting things they find are multiple envelopes bearing a bank logo, most of them unopened, containing notices of deposit. Her parents, though absent and uncommunicative, left their daughter with a not insubstantial stream of income in the form of monthly deposits into a trust account. Hathaway picks up Hannah’s laptop to go through more thoroughly later.

Back in the living room, Hathaway has to shout over the music to get Fiona’s attention. She looks over at them as if she’d hoped they’d vanished up the stairs never to return, rolls her eyes, and switches the music off.

“Fiona,” Hathaway says again, this time at normal volume.

She glares at him, possibly because he didn’t call her Fi, possibly because she hates coppers, possibly because she really does have revising to do, though Robbie can’t fathom how she can think with music that loud. 

“What?”

“We need to ask you a few more questions,” Hathaway says, leaning against the wall by the stairs. Robbie takes a seat in the armchair opposite her.

“Get on with it, then,” Fiona says clutching a book to her chest like a shield.

“You said you were celebrating last night—”

Before he can continue the front door bursts open and a lad with messy dark curls rushes in already in mid-sentence.

“Fi, I think they—” He stops short when he sees Robbie and Hathaway. “What’s going on?”

She gives him a look clearly meant to silence as Hathaway shows him his warrant card. “DS Hathaway, this is DI Lewis. Did you know Hannah Eldridge?”

“Yeah.” The word elongates to fill the silence as he looks from Robbie to Hathaway, his eyes wide and fearful. “What do you mean ‘did’?”

“What’s your name, son?” Robbie asks.

“Danny. Danny Longbourne.” 

“I think you’d better sit down,” Robbie says. Danny sits on the arm of the sofa closest to the door and looks over at Fiona sitting on the other end, laptop and papers spread out next to her and still holding the book up to her chest. She gives Danny an imploring look.

“Danny,” Robbie says. “Hannah was found dead this morning.” 

“Okay,” Danny says, nodding his head and staring at the floor. Robbie resists the urge to get up and lay a comforting hand on the lad’s shoulder.

“Were you with her last night?”

Danny looks at Fiona who nods at him slowly. “We were celebrating.”

“What time did you last see her?”

“Late. I don’t know. We were walking and we’d drunk most of the bottle and then—” Fiona drops her book on the floor with a loud thump and Danny looks up at her. She moves her head in a way that could be a shake of the head or nothing but an errant movement. “We all went home.” Danny finishes.

“This celebrating,” Hathaway says. “What does it entail?” 

“What do you think?” Fiona answers not giving Danny a chance to speak. 

“It doesn’t matter what I think.”

Fiona sighs. “Booze. Lots of it. Mostly vodka.” 

Hathaway raises an eyebrow. “And?”

“What do you mean ‘and’? You don’t celebrate with a few drinks?”

“I don’t tend to celebrate,” Hathaway says, stone-faced.

“Fiona. Fi,” Robbie cuts in. “This whole investigation is going to go much more smoothly if you can help us find the answers we need and find out what happened to your friend.”

“She’s not my friend.”

“Okay,” Robbie says glancing at Hathaway who is watching her intently, no doubt cataloguing every subtle movement. “But we still need your help.”

“Yeah, so, we were out and we were drinking. That’s not a crime.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Then what’s all this,” Fiona waves her hand at the two of them and Danny perched on the other end of the sofa.

“Murder is a crime,” Hathaway says.

“You think Hannah was—” Danny starts, chokes on his words and then starts again. “You think she was murdered?”

“We don’t know,” Robbie says. “That’s what we’re trying to find out. Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm Hannah?”

Danny shakes his head. “No I— Everyone liked Hannah. She was nice. Just really nice, you know? Why would…” Danny trails off and looks at the floor, then up at Fiona again, an inscrutable look on his face that is clearly trying to telegraph silent information to her across the room. Neither of them says anything aloud.

“Fiona,” Hathaway prompts. “Can you—”

“Of course I can’t,” she says with a huff before he can finish the question.

“We need to know who else was with you last night and who was the last to see Hannah,” Hathaway says.

“It was just us,” says Danny gesturing to the flat at large. “The five of us.”

“Your flatmates?”

“Jess and Alex. But they spent most of the time snogging. When it started raining they came back here.”

“It started raining around half two,” Hathaway says. If Hathaway knows that then that would account for the ever-expanding dark circles under his eyes.

“I guess,” Danny says.

“And you, and Fi, and Hannah? You came back here as well?” Robbie asks.

Danny looks at Fiona then back at Robbie. “It wasn’t raining that hard.” 

“So you stayed out in the rain instead of coming back here with your flatmates?”

“Yes,” Danny replies hesitantly, glancing at Fiona again. Fiona is tight-lipped and gives him a barely perceptible shake of her head.

“How long did you stay out in the rain?”

“I don’t know.”

“What aren’t you telling me, Danny? Where did you go? If you saw something happen to Hannah we need to know.”

Danny is staring intently at his hands clutched together in his lap, knuckles white. Fiona glares at him but he doesn’t look up.

“We… We weren’t in the rain for that long.” Robbie leans forward with his elbows on his knees, as Danny starts to explain. He can almost feel Hathaway radiating impatience from his spot leaning against the wall. “We went to the Botanic Garden. There’s this night blooming flower in one of the greenhouses. There’s a spot in the fence where there’s this tree and you can…” Danny holds up one hand and makes a jumping motion over it with the other. “You’re not going to arrest us for trespassing are you?”

“No Danny, we’re not,” Robbie says, as kindly as he can. Danny gives him a look of sheer relief.

“You saw this flower and you came back here afterwards?”

“Yes.”

“With Hannah?”

Danny glances at Fiona again, she looks murderous. “No.”

“Where was Hannah?”

“She said she was going to the lab.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“She was always going to the lab,” Fiona says. “We’d be watching a movie or celebrating or whatever and she’d just get up and say she had to go to the lab. Anytime. All the time.”

“And what time was this, when she went to the lab?”

“After it started raining.”

“Can you give us anything more specific than that?” Hathaway asks.

Fiona shoots him a look as if he’s asking for something impossible and should know better. 

“We were celebrating,” she says as if that is enough of an explanation.

Hathaway frowns and then changes tactics. “How do you get into the lab in the middle of the night? It must be locked after hours.”

“Key cards.”

Hathaway nods and writes something down in his notebook. “The last time either of you saw Hannah was when you left the Botanic Garden last night?”

Fiona and Danny both nod and Danny mumbles, “Yes.”

“And you didn’t think it strange when you didn’t see her here this morning?”

Fiona shrugs. “No. She was always sleeping at the lab if she had some big experiment on, and she almost always had some big experiment on. Chemistry was basically her life.”

“Except for celebrating and breaking into greenhouses to look at night blooming flowers?” 

Fiona shrugs again. “Sure.”

“Can you think of any reason why she would have been by the boathouses?” Hathaway asks.

“Is that where they found her?” Danny asks.

“Yes,” Robbie says.

Danny shakes his head. “She said she was going to the lab. I guess I should have— We just came back here.” He shakes his head again and stares down at his hands in his lap looking morose. If there is more to get out of him they’re not going to get it right now.

“Thank you for your help,” Robbie says, standing and handing Danny one of his cards. “If you think of anything else, anything at all, ring me.”

Danny nods, takes the card, and stuffs it in his pocket, earning a glare from Fiona. 

“We’ll show ourselves out,” Hathaway says, crossing to the door. Fiona’s glare follows them until the door is shut behind them.

Jess and Alex, found in the lab, have no more useful information than Fiona or Danny. By seven pm they barely know any more than they did at seven am. Hannah Eldridge was out late Sunday night with her friends, broke into the Botanic Garden to look at a flower, and was found dead the next morning on the other side of Christ Church Meadow. Despite Hannah’s assertion that she was going to the lab, there is no indication that her key card was swiped Sunday night or early Monday morning—though the records do show that Hannah did indeed often go to the lab in the middle of the night.

Hathaway is looking downright surly by the time they leave the lab and has stopped trying to hide the fact that he’s favouring his left side. He lights a cigarette as soon as they’re out the door letting out a sigh of relief with his first exhale.

“Pint,” Lewis says. 

Hathaway nods. “But no celebrating.”


	2. Monday evening

“You know you can talk to me, right?” Lewis says two pints in. It would be a non-sequitur if James hadn’t been bracing for it all day.

“Do I?” James replies, spinning his pint slowly in front of him.

“James.” Lewis leans forward across the table, both hands around his pint, and gives James a searching look. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“No, sir. I’m fine. I’m just tired.” That gets him the raised eyebrow of _do you think you can fob me off that easily_. 

“These strange injuries over the weekend are a matter of course, then?”

Lewis is not wrong, he has had quite a run of bad luck the past four days. It’s been frustrating and embarrassing, making him late for work, screwing up his rehearsal, forcing him to beg favours from Lewis, but it’s hardly life-threatening. He likely bruised his ribs when he fell yesterday, but it doesn’t hurt that much as long as he keeps still and doesn’t slouch. Besides, it’s not like A&E would do anything but tell him to take it easy and not lift anything heavy. 

The lack of sleep has made him clumsy is all. And realistically, the middle of the night phone calls that have kept him awake for most of the past week are not all that different to his usual bouts of insomnia. The fact that this particular reason for not sleeping comes from an external source is no more reason to bother Lewis with it than any other time. He only needs to hold out until they’re off rota, then he can turn his phone off at night. Problem solved.

“Accidents happen,” James says. “And bad things come in threes, as they say.”

“Do they now? By my count, this morning’s puncture is four.”

James shrugs, the muscles in his left side stretching painfully, and hopes Lewis doesn’t notice his wince. “Guess I’ve got two more before I’m done.”

Lewis takes another sip of his pint, watching James with too perceptive eyes.

“I can see you don’t want to talk about it, and I won’t ask, but I need to know that whatever you’re not telling me has nothing to do with the case.”

“It doesn’t,” James says, injecting confidence he doesn’t feel into his voice. “Your concern is appreciated, but I really am fine. It’s nothing a good night’s sleep won’t cure.”

Lewis looks at him for a long moment, not convinced but apparently not going to push it any further, and nods. James has to look away from the genuine concern on Lewis’ face. It’s not necessary, and he’s sure even if it was he wouldn’t deserve it.

“Okay. But do one thing for me will you, lad?”

“Anything,” James says possibly a bit too quickly and little too sincerely. The lack of sleep is starting to break down his walls. Lewis either doesn’t notice or pretends not to.

“If those ribs are still bothering you as much tomorrow get yourself looked at before you come into the nick.”

“Sir, I—”

“Tell me you will. You’re no good to me so banged up you can’t take a proper look at a corpse.”

James sighs, feeling how uncomfortable the pub bench is against his side. “Yes, okay. If it still hurts this much I will.”

“Good,” Lewis says and smiles at him as if all he was trying to do was get James to admit he was in pain. Maybe he was, but he drops it all the same.

They pass the rest of their pints, and a third, in companionable silence and occasional chit-chat, largely Lewis’ doing: speculation about the case, news of Lyn and the baby, a brief foray into football to which James has nothing to contribute. As usual, listening to Lewis talk goes a long way toward calming James’ jangled nerves.

Hour drawing late and benign conversation topics exhausted Lewis offers James a lift home. James declines politely but firmly. Lewis looks like he’s about to insist.

“It’s out of your way,” James says, grasping for a plausible excuse. “Besides, the walk will do me good, stretch my muscles a bit.” Clear his head. 

“Suit yourself,” Lewis says, his tone bordering on affectionate. Or it’s beer and wishful thinking. James can only be imagining the way Lewis’ hand lingers on his shoulder as he gives James a pat on the back before heading toward his car.

James stops to light a cigarette as he watches Lewis drive off, intending to walk home and call it an early night, see if he can manage a couple of hours sleep before the phone calls start up. He tilts his head back and exhales toward the sky, smoke disappearing into the grey of the quickly moving clouds. Earlier the wind had been damp, autumnal, but now it’s turned an unseasonable, biting cold. He stuffs the hand not holding the cigarette into his coat pocket, but he finds no gloves, only paper. Right. The envelope he found under the windscreen wiper of his car this morning. He’d grabbed it as Lewis pulled up in front of his flat and forgot about it during the day, a sure sign that the lack of sleep is catching up with him.

The envelope is made of thick paper, more cream-coloured than white, with nothing written on it. He flips it over to check there’s also nothing on the back, then opens it. The folded pages inside are made of the same paper as the envelope, he unfolds them to find a letter written in fine calligraphy. James moves back toward pub door for better light, the curves of the calligraphy difficult to make out in the dark.

A loud group of fellow smokers exits the pub as he walks up, huddling under the light and blocking most of the pavement. James flicks his cigarette to the ground, pushes past them back into the welcome warmth of the pub, and takes a seat at the bar.

* * *

“Ta,” James says when the barman plunks the glass of whisky down in front of him. He downs half of it, ignoring the man’s raised eyebrow. Yes, it’s his third drink and yes, he had three pints with Lewis but the barman doesn’t know that. Except that he clearly does; keeping an eye on patrons in a pub is not unlike detective work in some regards. The barman is probably a sight better at it than James is at this moment.

James sighs, takes another sip of whisky and reads the letter through again.

_Sergeant Hathaway,_

_It’s been quite diverting, watching you stumble through the past week. I’d have thought a police detective would be more accustomed to the lack of sleep with all those late nights down the station and early morning callouts. But I suppose I should give you some credit with the week you’ve had. That tyre puncture on Friday when you were already running late was quite unfortunate. And then to cut your hands so badly the very next day, and on top of that the fall you took yesterday morning. Who would have thought the combination of pavement and water could be so very slick? Well, I would, but I had specialist knowledge. And another tyre puncture today. What an incredible run of bad luck!_

_Spoiler: that was all me. Does it feel better or worse knowing that it wasn’t all down to happenstance? Or had you guessed that already? When we first met you would have. Back when you managed to pull one over on me and arrest me. It won’t happen again. You were tireless back then, now you just seem tired. How the mighty have fallen._

_You were so dedicated, sifting through all that evidence in a few days time. You weren’t the sort to ask for help either, were you? Did that all yourself to prove your worth. Have you proved it yet? Has anyone noticed?_

_I had some time whilst I was locked away to do a bit of research on you, keep up with your accomplishments and promotions. Though I admit I didn’t keep up with your activities quite as thoroughly after I got out. I had my own life, you see. But imagine my surprise when I looked you up again only to discover you were still a sergeant. What happened? Seven years as a sergeant seems a bit unusual for someone as bright as you. But then, you didn’t take the opportunity I offered you at the time. Maybe you’re not quite as brilliant as you lead everyone to believe._

_At first, I’d thought it must have been that they weren’t giving promotions at Cowley. But no, I looked into that as well. Many of your peers have been promoted above you and gone on to better positions elsewhere. So why are you still in Oxford, Sergeant? I think I can hazard a guess, but do you know yourself?_

_Keep an eye out for an interesting experience coming your way soon, one might even go so far as to say it will be electrifying. After that things will get truly interesting. Then you will have a choice. It will be a simple choice, but not an easy one._

_Yours in adversity,  
J_

_PS: You must be wondering about the calligraphy. Our fine government saw fit to offer a course, rehabilitation through artistic endeavours. Wasn’t that nice of them? It was admittedly rather dull but there wasn’t much else to do in prison._

Even without a proper signature, James has no doubt who J is. Julian Eldridge, convicted blackmailer and all around slimy git, his first arrest as a DS. Seven years on, that tone of smug condescension is still unmistakable. It can’t be a coincidence that the first time he’s heard the name Eldridge in years was at the crime scene this morning, and now here Julian Eldridge is threatening him and claiming responsibility for the shit week he’s had.

James sighs and scrubs his hand over his face. He’s tired and he’s beginning to wish he hadn’t had quite so much whisky. He uses the mirror behind the bar to take a surreptitious look around the rest of the pub behind him. Nothing out of the ordinary. The worst thing about the fact that all his bad luck has been deliberately contrived to set him on edge is that it’s working.

Eldridge can’t know the reason why James hasn’t gone for promotion. He’s speculating, implying that he knows more than he does. A strategy he also employed when he was blackmailing his fellow Queen’s College students. And Hannah was found at the Queen’s College boathouse, if Eldridge was there as well…

There’s nothing in the letter that could be used to prove beyond a doubt that Eldridge wrote it, but the fact that there isn’t only makes James surer that it is him. Eldridge was meticulous, but it was his own arrogance and greed tripped him up in the end.

James had taken great pride in finding, despite Eldridge’s careful handling of every blackmail letter he sent, irrefutable evidence that he was the perpetrator. Eldridge had shouted the whole way to the nick about how he was not responsible for the things he had single-handedly done. He was born to better things than his victims so it didn’t matter if he hurt them in the process of getting what he believed he deserved. The three-year sentence, in James’ opinion, hadn’t been long enough.

It will have been at least four years since Eldridge was released, assuming he served his entire sentence. So, why come after him now? Unless this isn’t Eldridge after all. But the more James thinks about the way Eldridge had tried to cosy up to him from the first interview. The way he had erroneously marked James as one of his own by his accent, and made appeals to James’ sense of civic duty to let him get away with blackmail because, of course, he deserved more than his victims. The way he tried to bring James over to his side with offers of bribes and favours. The more James thinks about all of that the more convinced he is this is Eldridge.

If he can confirm that Eldridge was in prison while the calligraphy program was being offered… It’s still circumstantial but it’s something. And if he can find a current address for Eldridge in the process, then he can stop this all before it goes any further or Lewis asks any more prying questions. James downs the last of his whisky, folds the letter back into his pocket, stands somewhat unsteadily, and heads for the door.

* * *

By the time he makes it home the cold has sobered him up somewhat, but he still fumbles the keys in cold fingers, dropping them twice before he manages to get the correct key into the lock.

Then his arm is on fire, searing pain up through his shoulder. He wrenches his arm back from the door and takes an involuntary step back, tripping over his own feet and landing hard on the ground, his breath knocked out of him with a gasping wheeze. The impact sends a stabbing pain through his left side and he sees stars when his head hits the pavement. He lies there for what feels like minutes but must be only seconds, the cold of the pavement against his legs and head a striking counterpoint to the fire in his arm and hand.

“Well, fuck,” he says to the night.

Once his breath has returned to something approaching normal James realises what happened. He lived on a working farm for the first twelve years of his life, he knows what it feels like to touch an electric fence. Though, this was a stronger jolt than any of the times he’d been dared to touch horse fences on the estate. 

He stretches out his right arm, flexing his fingers. His arm feels rubbery, his movements shaky, but everything moves like it should and there’s no new pain now that the initial shock has dissipated.

From his new vantage point on the ground, James can see something rectangular in the shadow of the steps and what could be a wire leading to the door. He stands, feeling a bit unsteady, and walks toward the shadow, stumbling a bit as he goes. Sure enough, the dark rectangle is a battery tucked into the corner of the step, a wire with the end stripped bare of plastic insulation leading to the door latch. He grabs the wire by the base where the insulation is still intact and gives it a good yank, tugging it free of the battery leads and breaking the connection, then pulls the wire off the latch and picks up the battery. There is an envelope underneath it. He picks that up as well and brings the lot inside.

James drops the battery and wires on the floor inside the door, shucks his coat, grabs the first envelope from the pocket, and brings both envelopes with him to the sofa. He sits down, rests his elbows on his knees and takes a deep breath, trying—with only marginal success—to still the lingering jitteriness from the adrenaline rush of being electrocuted.

He scrubs his hands across his face, sighs, and picks up the latest envelope. It’s made of the same thick cream-coloured paper as the previous, though this one has ‘James’ written across the front. He tears off the end and shakes the contents out onto the table. More folded pages of cream-coloured paper. James reaches for them then stops. The first letter is now covered in his own prints but this one isn’t. His gloves, which he forgot to take with him this morning, are sitting on the kitchen worktop. He grabs them, pulls them on, and unfolds the letter.

_James,_

_May I call you James? I know I only just wrote you this morning, but after watching you this past week I feel like I know you so well. Sergeant Hathaway seems overly formal and you’re not really a Jim, are you?_

_You’ve read my previous letter I presume. Well, I say I presume. I shouldn’t though, that is only going to give you a false sense of security. I know you read it, I saw you outside the pub._

_And I know you couldn’t have missed this one. Electrifying, wasn’t it? You didn’t guess what it was beforehand, did you? Honestly, I didn’t expect that you would. I admit I didn’t exactly give you fair warning. But hindsight, right? Now that you know what it was it all makes sense, doesn’t it? Don’t worry, I’ll give you more of a sporting chance next time. Maybe._

_How inconvenient having to call your boss for a lift this morning. You did call him, yes? That’s how he knew to arrive at just the right time? Is he the first person you call when you’re in trouble? You’ll forgive me saying so, I hope. But isn’t that a bit sad?_

_It must be infuriating for you to know I’ve been here this whole time and you didn’t even realise. Some detective you are. Let’s see if you can do better now you know there’s something to look for. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Solve puzzles. Catch people out. Well, you’re not going to catch me this time. I’m going to catch you._

_I can’t see you right now but I know you’re going to shake your head at that. That’s the sort of arrogant copper you are, isn’t it? You think you’re better than everyone because you can use the law to inflict pain on others and tear down people’s lives because you can. You’re not better than me. You got the better of me once, but you’re not better than me._

_Don’t get me wrong, I could see you if I chose to. I know where you live like I know where you work and where your dear old boss lives. I’m not ready for you to find me yet, though, so it doesn’t seem worth the risk._

_Mustn’t linger too long. You’ll be leaving the pub sooner or later. Though later seems to be the way of it with you and pubs of late, doesn’t it?_

_One word of advice before I go. Well, a few sentences: Everyone has a breaking point. Everything has a breaking point. Keep that in mind as you go about your day tomorrow. It may keep you from harm._

_J_

_PS: This is the part where I say no police, but you are the police. No other police or I may be forced to take drastic measures._

James reads the letter through again and then places it on the coffee table in front of him. It’s Eldridge. It has to be. The turn of phrase, the arrogance, the vague threats, the pranks; which he had also played on his University blackmail victims. Pay the money and the pranks will stop the letters had said, though never in so few words, and not written in calligraphy. The pranks never stopped even after the money was paid and Eldridge isn’t asking for money now.

James picks up his laptop and logs into the police database with Lewis’ account. If Lewis asks James will say he was searching all Eldridges for a familial connection to Hannah.

It doesn’t take him long to discover that Julian Eldridge was not only in prison during the time the calligraphy course was offered but that the lock-up he was in was part of the pilot programme for Artistic Rehabilitation. There are gaps in the records, though, not all of the original case files, prison records, and parole reports have been digitised, and there is no recent address listed for Eldridge. Which leaves him right where he started, with a feeling that tells him it must be Eldridge but no way to prove it.

James runs his hand through his hair, wincing when he brushes the tender spot where his head hit the pavement. He contemplates the letters and the growing array of his own notes before him. It’s all conjecture, and circumstance, and gut feeling. Nothing concrete. He’s tired, his ribs ache, and his position hunched over the coffee table for the past, he glances at his watch, two hours, is not helping. James sighs and leans back against the cushions, closing his eyes.

He’s almost drifted off when his mobile rings, startling him to wakefulness and a shooting pain in his side as he sits up too quickly. He grabs the phone off the cushion next to him. It’s a withheld number. When he answers there’s nothing but silence on the other end, like every other withheld number call he’s received. He listens for anything that could be a clue as to the whereabouts of the caller. Nothing. Not even breathing. The caller’s phone must be on mute.

“Fuck you, Eldridge,” James says and ends the call. He drops his phone on the cushion next to him and leans back against the sofa again but it’s no use, he’s wide awake now. If things progress the way they have every other night for the past week, he’s going to get another call approximately every forty-five minutes, but not exactly, until his alarm goes off at seven. The end of their current stint on the rota can’t come soon enough.

The physical case files will be in archives, he might as well keep digging if he’s not going to get any sleep. James grabs the letters, his notes, laptop, and coat and heads out the door. It’s not until he gets to the kerb that he remembers his car still has a flat tyre. He sets a reminder on his phone to call the tow service about it at a decent hour.

It’s too late for buses, so he walks to the station.


	3. Tuesday morning

Hathaway is hunched over his desk intent on the open folder in front of him. Case files, some of which look rather old, photocopied pages, and handwritten notes are strewn across the desk, interspersed with cups from the cafeteria coffee machine, sandwich wrappers, and a mostly empty packet of cigarettes. It’s not unlike how Robbie found him that morning during the Poppy Toynton case; piecing together a jigsaw of disparate photographs because Robbie had thought something wasn’t right. But there’s been nothing in the Hannah Eldridge case to warrant anything like that sort of all-night research, no connection to any past case, not even the post-mortem or toxicology report yet. Something isn’t right, but it’s not the case. It’s Hathaway.

Robbie steps into the office and hangs his anorak on the back of the door. Hathaway startles at the movement, closing the folder he was reading, pushing it under the stack next to his left elbow, and pulling another folder toward him. Robbie sits down at his desk and switches on his computer. There is an email alerting him to the fact that he logged into the police database remotely at 12:37 am, and advising him to take precautions if it wasn’t him. It wasn’t him. He glances at Hathaway who is reading the contents of the new folder with the intensity of someone who is not paying attention to what he’s looking at.

“Looks like you’ve been busy.” Hathaway’s head snaps up and he shrugs as if the chaos surrounding him doesn’t exist. “What’s all this then?” Robbie asks, gesturing to the mass of papers.

“I had a thought last night,” Hathaway says. He stands, wincing slightly, and hands Robbie a stack of printouts striped with yellow highlighting. “Hannah Eldridge’s most recent bank statements. She’d been making regular cash withdrawals of £400 to £600 from her trust account for the past two months, but for the six months previous the only activity was automatic transfers to her personal bank account.”

“You got all this overnight?” 

“Her bank login was saved on her laptop,” Hathaway says. Robbie hmphs at that. 

“You’re thinking blackmail, then?” 

Hathaway nods. “Her second cousin, a Julian Eldridge, has a blackmail conviction from 2005. Last known address in central London three months ago.” The way Hathaway says ‘a Julian Eldridge’ makes Robbie think that the name means more to him than a connection found in the database.

“He’s been in contact with her?”

“Not that I’ve found, but there’s got to be a reason for those withdrawals.”

“The reason doesn’t have to be blackmail.”

“It fits though…” Hathaway looks down as he says it, not meeting Robbie’s eyes. 

“What else have you got?” Robbie asks. With the number of folders and papers littering Hathaway’s desk, and the knowledge that he logged in to the database late last night, Robbie doesn’t believe for a second that all Hathaway has been doing is looking at Hannah’s bank statements. 

“Nothing else, sir,” Hathaway says, still avoiding eye contact. 

“So, we’ve got flatmates who may or may not be proper mates, some cash withdrawals, and a second cousin with a blackmail conviction. That’s it?”

“I’m afraid so, sir.”

“And not a motive in sight.”

“No, sir.” Hathaway’s desk phone rings and he scrambles to answer it, pushing folders and papers aside. “Hathaway. Yes. We’ll be there in ten.” He hangs up the phone. “Dr Hobson,” he says, gesturing toward the phone. “We are invited to the morgue for the post-mortem results. Also,” he grabs a folder from one of the stacks on his desk and holds it out to Robbie. “Toxicology report, drugs found in Hannah’s system.”

Robbie takes the folder, flipping through it. 

“The resealable bags from her purse?”

“Already sent them to be tested.”

“Good.” Robbie grabs his coat and follows Hathaway out the door.

* * *

“Those drugs,” Robbie says as he walks into the morgue. “Could they be the cause of death?”

Laura gives him a look, drawing the sheet up over Hannah Eldridge’s body. “Good morning to you too.”

“Good morning, Dr Hobson,” Hathaway says from behind him, a note of mocking cheerfulness to his voice.

“Good morning, James,” Laura says, then turns to Robbie. “Cause of death was complications from cerebral trauma due to a blow to the head. The blow wasn’t enough to kill her outright, but the drugs in her system would have exacerbated any lethargy caused by the head wound. Even walking, which it seems she attempted based on the blood smears on the wall, would have quickly exhausted her. Once she sat down to rest, if she dozed off, the drugs would have made it difficult for her to wake up again. Ultimately, she died of the head wound. Without experiencing that trauma the drugs would have only made her fall asleep. Though she would have had one hell of a headache when she woke up.”

“And was it accidental? The blow to the head?” Robbie asks.

“Judging by the angle of impact and the depth of the wound I’m more inclined to think she was pushed.”

“Anything else?”

“Besides the drug cocktail in the toxicology report? No. You said she was reading chemistry?”

“Apparently in line for a double first,” Hathaway says.

“In my experience,” Laura says with a twinkle in her eye—there’s a story there Robbie would like to hear. “Chemists tend to sample their own wares. It’s an interesting cocktail, likely designed to be hallucinogenic, though there’s no way to be sure if that is the effect it has without taking it.”

“What would a dose look like?” Robbie asks.

“Probably a powder taken by dissolving it in water.”

“Distributed in small plastic bags?” Hathaway adds. 

Laura nods. “Very likely. Probably one dose per bag to save having to measure it.” 

“Thanks, Laura,” Robbie says, turning to Hathaway. “Time to pay another visit to Holywell Street.” 

Laura pulls Hathaway aside as he walks around the table toward the door. “How are the ribs?” she asks in a hushed tone.

“Fine,” Hathaway says. “Nothing like a murder to take one’s mind off life’s little inconveniences.”

She gives him a sceptical look then reaches out her hand toward his left side. “May I?” Hathaway shrugs, wincing only slightly. She runs her hand along his side, pressing gently over his ribs. “Not broken,” she says. “But try not to strain them too much, all right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Hathaway says in his best placating tone before walking past Robbie out the door. Laura raises an eyebrow at Robbie and he gives her a smile before she turns back to her work. 

Hathaway gets a call from forensics as they’re getting in the car, and Robbie spares a moment to wonder just how early Hathaway must have come into the nick and sent the plastic bags off for testing to get a report back by half nine. There is residue of the same drugs found in Hannah’s system inside the bags. Which means, if Laura is right about the dosage, Hannah wasn’t the only one who had taken the drugs Sunday night.

* * *

There is no music blaring on the approach to the Holywell flat this time but Fiona is no more welcoming.

“You again,” she says, leaving the door open and walking back to her books and laptop on the sofa. It looks as if she hasn’t left the spot since yesterday. 

“Are any of your flatmates in?” Hathaway asks, looking around the room.

“What do you think?”

“If I knew I wouldn’t have to ask, would I?”

“I think Danny’s upstairs,” she says.

Hathaway wastes no time heading up the stairs, but not at his usual two steps at a time. 

“Jess and Alex?” Robbie asks after Hathaway has disappeared from view. 

“The lab,” Fiona says and then picks up one of her books, studiously ignoring Robbie.

Hathaway is back a minute later with a sleepy looking Danny in joggers and a faded t-shirt. Danny sits down on the sofa next to Fiona. She puts the book down and looks up at them for the first time since they entered the flat, and Hathaway takes up the same spot as yesterday, leaning against the wall by the stairs. 

“We have a few more questions about Sunday night,” Robbie says. 

“Get on with it, then. I’ve still got revising to do if you haven’t noticed.”

“You said you celebrated with alcohol,” Hathaway says.

“We do.”

“Only alcohol?”

“Did I say anything besides alcohol?”

“No. But if that’s true, how do you explain the fact that drugs were found Hannah’s system?” Hathaway asks.

Fiona’s eyes narrow in consternation.

“There was residue of those same drugs found in plastic bags inside her purse,” Robbie adds. “The number of bags she had would have contained more drugs than one person is likely to have consumed by themselves in one evening.”

“What Hannah had in her purse has nothing to do with me.”

“You’re saying you were unaware of her drug use?”

“I’m not saying anything.”

“Then I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you to come down to the station,” Hathaway says, pushing off from the wall and starting toward the sofa.

For the first time since they met her, Fiona looks something other than angry, she looks afraid. “I can’t— If they—” She holds out her hand to ward Hathaway off. 

“If you refuse to cooperate we can arrest you.”

“No! You can’t—” 

“Denying the possibility won’t keep it from happening,” Hathaway says. 

“You don’t understand.”

“Enlighten me, then.” Hathaway crosses his arms in front of his chest, then uncrosses them as if the motion bothers his ribs.

Fiona looks at Danny, then back at Hathaway and shakes her head.

“If the college finds out—” 

“If the college finds out what?”

“I haven’t done anything illegal!”

“No one is saying you did,” Robbie says.

“Then why am I being interrogated?”

“Because you’re obviously hiding something,” Hathaway growls.

Fiona opens her mouth to say something and then shuts it resolutely, her lips a thin line, glare back in place. Robbie shoots Hathaway a quelling look but Hathaway isn’t looking his way, his eyes intent on Fiona. 

“If I am,” Fiona says. “It’s none of your damn business.”

Hathaway takes two steps closer to the sofa, looming over her. “That’s not good enough.”

“James,” Robbie hisses. “That’s enough.” Hathaway’s head snaps up to look at Robbie as if he’d forgot that Robbie was in the room. He looks chagrined. 

Robbie turns back to Fiona. “Fi, we are trying to solve your friend’s murder. Anything you know, anything at all, can help us find her killer.” Danny, sitting next to her, is sending her an imploring look which she is ignoring. Fiona toys with the pages of her book then sighs, looking defeated.

“I suppose you’ll find out anyway.”

“We will,” Robbie says. “It’s our job.”

“I’m here on scholarship,” Fiona says. “Anything about drugs— If the college finds out. I’ll be sent down.” 

“We’re not here for a drugs bust,” Robbie says. “We’re here to solve a murder.” 

Fiona shakes her head. “You didn’t say you wouldn’t tell them.”

“We can’t promise that the college won’t find out, but I can promise you that our goal is to find Hannah’s murderer, nothing else, and we need your help for that.”

Fiona looks at Danny then back to Robbie and then at Hathaway, now standing halfway between the wall and the sofa. “Fine. It wasn’t—” she huffs out a sigh, the indignation returning to her voice. “Hannah wasn’t dealing or anything. It was all recreational. She didn’t sell anything.”

“Were you the only ones she gave the drugs to?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I think there were a few others. She didn’t advertise it or anything.”

“She said it wasn’t dangerous,” Danny says, his voice sounding small and scared. “But it— the drugs killed her?”

“The drugs didn’t kill her on their own,” Robbie replies. “But she hit her head and the drugs would have added to her disorientation and kept her from waking up once she fell asleep.” 

“But we— If we— It could have been any of us?” Danny asks. 

“Yes,” Robbie says. “If any of the rest of you who’d taken it had hit your head the way Hannah did you may not have woken up either.”

Fiona sighs and looks at Danny who is still giving her an imploring look.

“All right, fine,” she says, crossing her arms in front of her chest and staring straight ahead, not looking at any of them. Danny turns away from Fiona, toward Robbie. 

“The drugs were part of Hannah’s thesis,” Danny says. “She explained it to me once but she was a much better chemist than I am and I only understood part of it. She didn’t bring them every time. Only, she’d be working on some new angle and she’d need to test it. She’d always take some and then offer it to the rest of us. We’d take it mostly, but it’s not like she was making us or anything. And she wasn’t selling it. It wasn’t for money. She was a good person.”

“This wasn’t the first time Hannah brought drugs to your celebrations, then?” Robbie asks. Danny shakes his head. “It was a regular occurrence?”

“Kind of? Last year not as much but almost every time this term.” 

“When did she first bring them?” Hathaway asks.

Danny looks up at the ceiling as if the answer will be written there. “It was warm. Last spring? Just before the end of Trinity term, I think.”

“Then she brought drugs again this autumn,” Robbie says.

Danny nods. “Yeah.”

“Had Hannah been behaving differently at all the past few weeks?” Hathaway asks. “Anything out of the ordinary?”

“Not really,” Danny says.

“Does ‘not really’ mean she was or wasn’t behaving differently?”

“Er. It wasn’t her really, but there was this older bloke, maybe your age?” he says, looking toward Hathaway. “He kept coming around. She never seemed very happy to see him and she always used to drag him outside to talk if he came by when we were here. She never introduced him.”

“Boyfriend?” Robbie asks.

Danny shakes his head. “I don't think so. She told me she was asexual when I asked her out second year. Hannah was all about the work. I’m not even sure why she celebrated with us, really. She didn’t ever just hang out. She always had something bigger going on, some grand plan—”

“This bloke,” Hathaway interrupts. “What did he look like?”

“About my height, dark hair, skinny. He lurked round the corner from the flat for like a week when I first saw him. I talked to him a few times. He was sort of creepy, but then I didn’t see him anymore so I didn’t think it mattered.”

“How long ago was this?” Hathaway asks. 

“Around the beginning of term?” Danny says. “Since then she answered her phone sometimes.”

“That’s unusual?” 

“Completely. She never answered her phone, everyone knew that. She only ever texted.”

“When did the phone answering start?” 

“Right after the last time I saw that bloke, I think.”

“Also, around the beginning of term?” 

“Yeah,” Danny says. Hathaway writes a few notes in his notebook. 

“We’ll need to take another look in Hannah’s room,” Hathaway says. 

“Didn’t you take enough of Hannah’s things yesterday?” Fiona asks. “Now you’re going to take more?” 

“If we find anything relevant, yes,” Hathaway says. “Is there some reason you don’t want us in her room?” 

“No more than the reason I don’t want you in my flat,” Fiona says, more than just an edge of annoyance in her voice.

“Is there something else you aren’t telling us?”

Fiona shoots him a scathing look. “No.”

“You’re certain of that? There’s nothing you’ve left out?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing was something before.”

“Well, it really is nothing now. Hannah brought drugs sometimes, we all took them. That’s it. Happy?”

“No.” Hathaway takes half a step closer, looming again. 

“James,” Robbie says. 

Hathaway looks up at Robbie, an inscrutable look on his face, then turns and heads up the stairs without another word. Robbie follows a minute later after smoothing things over with Fiona. 

Hannah’s room is in the same slight disarray as they left it the day before. Drawers open, books and clothes strewn across the floor and bed, though most of the mess was there when they first entered her room, not down to the previous day’s search. Hathaway stands from his crouch by the bed when Robbie comes through the door. He is holding a shoebox that, judging by the dust, looks to have been pulled out from under the bed. Robbie catches a split second look of pure dejected exhaustion before Hathaway schools his face to the blankest look he can manage, clearly bracing for a bollocking.

“Look,” Robbie says. “I know you’ve got something going on,” Hathaway starts to protest but Robbie puts up his hand to stop him. “I already told you I wasn’t going to ask about it, but you’ve got to sort it out. You can’t be shouting at witnesses no matter how surly. You know that.”

Hathaway bows his head, chastened. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“That’s not necessary, just don’t let it happen again.” 

Hathaway nods, “Yes, sir.”

“Find what you’re looking for?”

“No,” Hathaway says, dropping the shoebox on the bed. Robbie doesn’t need to ask to know that Hathaway was looking for blackmail letters. 

“Finished, then?” 

“Yes, sir,” Hathaway says, heading past Robbie out the door. Robbie hopes that means he’s finished with more than just this particular search. He’s becoming more and more sure that Hathaway lied to him last night when he said that whatever is going on with him has nothing to do with the case. But whatever else he’s not letting on about, Hathaway does seem to be favouring his left side somewhat less today.

* * *

A closer look at Hannah’s phone turns up semi-regular calls from a withheld number beginning five days after the first cash withdrawal. The calls are all around two to three minutes in length, the last one received two hours before Fiona said they went out to celebrate the night Hannah died. Hathaway puts in an expedited request to Hannah’s provider for information on the owner of the withheld number.

The rest of the day is spent chasing down the few leads they’ve got. Jess and Alex—once again, or still—in the lab have no new light to shed on the lurking dark-haired bloke. They seem to only have eyes for each other and chemistry. Hannah’s professors are equally unhelpful, same with the porter, which at least points to the bloke not being a student at Merton. That only leaves all of the rest of Oxford for them to search. 

Hathaway spends the later part of the afternoon scouring CCTV footage with Gurdip, hoping for a clear enough view of the lurker to identify him. Robbie heads back to their office, rereads the post-mortem and toxicology reports, and starts piecing together the relationship between the withheld number calls and the cashpoint withdrawals from Hannah’s trust account. He’s three-quarters of the way through, a phone call and a corresponding withdrawal for each, when his desk phone rings. 

It is, amazingly, Hannah’s provider with the number for the withheld calls. Someone over there is stepping up their level of police cooperation, though not so much that they have a name to go with the number. The world hasn’t been turned completely on its head. 

Robbie heads down to tech where Hathaway and Gurdip are still hunched over a monitor. The both look up, faces bathed in blue light, when he walks into the room. 

“Got a number back for those withheld calls on Hannah’s phone,” Robbie says. 

“Already?” Gurdip asks.

“Aye, a shock to me as well. No name though, can you run it through your database?”

Gurdip looks to Hathaway who nods, then goes back to watching the monitor. Hathaway is either completely absorbed in watching the CCTV or trying to avoid looking straight at Robbie. By the angle of Hathaway’s shoulders, Robbie would put his money on avoidance. Another talk over pints seems to be in order, yesterday’s clearly hasn’t had the desired effect.

The database doesn’t turn up a name, but it does show that a block of numbers in which this one fits were assigned to pay as you go mobiles sold by a shop in Abingdon. If Robbie leaves now he should be able to avoid most of the evening traffic on the way back. 

But Robbie doesn’t avoid the traffic even on the way there; a car wreck and the accompanying gawkers hold him up on the A34. By the time he arrives in front of the shop there’s a text from Hathaway.

_Nearly finished going through CCTV. Lurker is almost definitely Julian Eldridge._

The accompanying photo shows a surly, dark-haired bloke with startlingly light blue eyes, and is clearly not a screen capture from the CCTV. 

_You sure?_

_Yes._

Robbie is tempted to push for an explanation about where the photo came from but he hasn’t got the time to type out a text and still show the photo to the sales clerks before the shop closes.

One of the sales clerks recognises Eldridge right away as an arrogant tosser who paid in cash, didn’t give his name, and looked older than the photo. Robbie thanks her and heads back to the station. He doesn’t miss any of the traffic on the way back either.

* * *

Hathaway is coming down the corridor toward him as Robbie walks up to their office.

“Was it him?” he asks.

“Aye,” Robbie says. “The sales clerk said he looked older than the photo. It’s not from CCTV, is it?”

Robbie can’t see Hathaway’s face, he has turned and is gathering up the folders on his desk, and Robbie is surer now than he was down in tech that Hathaway’s avoidant behaviour is deliberate.

“No,” Hathaway says, still turned away from Robbie. “It’s from the original blackmail casefile. There’s a blind spot right in front of Hannah’s flat and Eldridge seemed to know where the cameras were and always visited at night. Even without a clear view of his face, the bloke on CCTV fits the description. Gurdip was able to trace his movements through an alley and round the back of the building.”

“What possessed you to sent me a photo you weren’t sure was the suspect?”

“I had a feeling.”

“This feeling wouldn’t have anything to do with whatever you’ve not been telling me, would it?” It’s not a huge leap from Hannah being blackmailed to the blackmailer being a bloke seen lurking around outside her flat, but Hathaway seems awfully insistent that it’s this particular bloke considering the lack of any connection between the two besides being distantly related.

“What does it matter if I’m right?”

“James,” Robbie says. “I don’t have to tell you that if the information that points to Eldridge was obtained in a way that will compromise the investigation—”

“It wasn’t,” Hathaway interrupts. “I’ll stop by Holywell and get Danny to confirm the identification on my way out.”

Robbie looks at his watch. It is quarter to six. “I’ll join you,” Robbie says. “Fancy a pint?”

“Sorry, sir. I’ve got a gig at eight at The Church of St Mary.” 

“There’s hardly a shortage of pubs near there.”

“The Church of St Mary at Broughton Castle, in Banbury,” Hathaway says. As if Robbie could have known he meant that one not the great big church of the same name on the High Street.

“Oh.” So much for getting Hathaway off down the pub for another talk, Banbury’s at least a forty-five-minute drive. “See you tomorrow, then,” Robbie says, and Hathaway is out the door, stack of folders and laptop in hand. The gig, at least, must mean that his hands are feeling better.


	4. Tuesday late night

Robbie’s phone is ringing. It’s the ring that’s not a ring that Hathaway programmed for police business and shouts a couple of months back. Robbie sighs and rolls over, groping in the dark for his phone on the nightstand. It must be something serious if he’s getting a callout with an open case. 

“Lewis,” Robbie says, wincing at how sleep-rough his voice sounds.

“Inspector Lewis?”

“Yes.”

“This is PC Lockhart, sir,” the voice on the other end says.

“You’re calling shouts now, Julie?”

“No, sir. It’s Sergeant Hathaway.” 

Robbie is suddenly wide awake in a way that he never is in the first minutes after receiving a shout. “What’s Sergeant Hathaway, lass?”

“There’s been an accident. He’s fine, only his car was involved. But it’s not drivable and it will be a while before we’re done with clean-up.”

“And if I come to fetch him he won’t have to wait around,” Robbie finishes for her. He climbs out of bed, holding the phone between his shoulder and chin as he begins getting dressed.

“Yes, sir.”

“Where is he?”

“Loop Farm Roundabout on the A44.”

“On my way,” Robbie says and rings off.

It would be pointless to try to count the number of times he’s made a similar drive to one crime scene or another at all hours of the night over the years, but the prickle of tension in his shoulders and the worry gathering at the edges of his mind is something new. Julie said James was fine, so he’s fine. Robbie didn’t even thank her in his rush to get out the door. He’ll have to remedy that when he gets to the scene. The scene of a car wreck involving his sergeant. Not a murder involving his sergeant. Robbie shakes his head at himself.

Low hanging clouds and fog crowd the road, making the drive take longer than it should this time of night. The eerie, pulsing glow of flashing lights shines through the mist as Robbie enters the roundabout. A police car is parked across the right lane blocking traffic. Behind it, half in the road and half on the median island is Hathaway’s car, the passenger’s side smashed against a signpost, bonnet consumed by bushes. The driver’s side door is open, interior light on, and the airbag is splayed over the steering wheel like some sort of obscene jellyfish.

Robbie pulls over behind the lone ambulance. The tension in his shoulders eases when he spots Hathaway sitting in the back of it, lit up from behind by the glow of the interior lights through the open doors. Hathaway has a blanket across his shoulders and is staring at the ground as a paramedic rolls up his shirtsleeve and starts wrapping his wrist. He winces at her first touch, looking like he wants nothing more than to pull away, but stays put. The paramedic makes quick work of the wrapping, then loops a sling over Hathaway’s neck and adjusts it to cradle his arm against his chest. Hathaway’s head comes up as she steps away, a look of disbelief crossing his face when he sees Robbie.

“Sir,” Hathaway says, his tone incredulous. “I told them not to bother you. I could have waited for a uniform to be free.”

“It’s no bother,” Robbie says. Hathaway shakes his head and looks down again, then fumbles in his coat for his cigarettes and lighter. The paramedic gives him a dark look and he stands, shrugging the blanket off his shoulders, and walks a few steps away before lighting the cigarette. Hathaway closes his eyes and leans back against the side of the ambulance as he inhales. He looks done in.

“All right, lad. Let’s get you home,” Robbie says after letting Hathaway smoke in silence for a minute. 

Hathaway gives Robbie a sideways look, still leaning heavily against the ambulance. He opens his mouth, as if he’s about to protest, but instead takes another long drag and then drops the cigarette to the ground, stomping it out against the scraggly side of the road grass. Robbie lets it go this time and follows Hathaway to the car.

Hathaway is halfway into the car when he straightens, looking alarmed. 

“Wait!” he shouts and starts back toward his own car before Robbie can stop him, crossing the roundabout without even looking for traffic. He’s met at his car by Julie who is carrying a guitar case. Right. James had a gig tonight, that’s why he was out here in the first place.

“Thanks for calling me,” Robbie says to Julie once he’s caught them up. “Even though this one didn’t want you to.”

“It’s all part of the job, sir,” she says with a knowing smile that makes Robbie wonder what new nonsense the rumour mill is churning out these days.

“Yes, thank you for—” Hathaway gestures toward the guitar case, his voice wavering slightly, then nods awkwardly and turns and walks back across the roundabout before she can reply. Robbie gently takes the guitar from Hathaway when they reach the car, stowing it in the back seat to prevent him holding it in his lap for the entire drive back to Oxford.

* * *

As soon as Robbie pulls up to the kerb in front of Hathaway’s flat he is out the door, round to the back to pull out his guitar, and up the walk before Robbie’s even taken off his seatbelt. When Robbie comes up behind him Hathaway has set the guitar case down on the step and is pulling out his keys. There is an envelope sellotaped to the front door with ‘James’ written on it in fancy script. Hathaway grabs it awkwardly, the sling hindering his movements, and stuffs it into his coat pocket.

“Secret admirer?” Robbie asks.

“Hardly,” Hathaway says, unlocking the door but not going through. He turns to Robbie, not quite meeting his eyes. “Thank you for the lift, sir,” he says, gone all stiff and formal. “I’m sorry to have bothered you twice in one week.”

“As I said, it’s no bother. You all right?”

“I’m fine. I’m just—” Hathaway makes an aborted motion with his right hand, then winces, the motion stopped by the sling. “I’ve just wrecked my car.”

Robbie nods. “And sprained your wrist in the bargain. You look like you could use a hand getting settled.”

“I’m fine,” Hathaway says again, no more convincing than before. He picks up his guitar with his left hand and turns, pushing against the door with his right elbow. He lets out a small gasp as he the motion puts pressure on his injured wrist. Robbie reaches past his shoulder and pushes the door the rest of the way open for him.

Hathaway walks through without another word, stumbling over what looks like a car battery just inside the door. He swears under his breath and gives it a swift kick, moving it a few inches out of the way, puts the guitar down against the opposite wall, then turns around to face Robbie again, blocking the way through to the living room.

Robbie can see past his shoulder that the coffee table is littered with papers, envelopes, and case files that look like they were dropped there in a rush, as well as a full ashtray, multiple empty glasses, and a half-empty bottle of whisky. Not entirely different to the state of Hathaway’s desk early this morning.

“If it’s all the same to you,” Hathaway says, shifting to the left, blocking Robbie’s view. “I think I’m going to turn in.”

“If I didn’t know better I’d say you were trying to get rid of me,” Robbie says.

Hathaway sighs. “It’s been a long day.”

“Aye. If I recall, that long day was made longer than necessary by you researching something connected to our case in the wee hours of the morning. You must know the system sends me a notification when someone logs in on my account. Care to let me in on what that is now?”

“I would have thought wrecking my car would get me a pass from your badgering,” Hathaway says, voice shot full of venom.

“You’ve been running yourself ragged this past week. I’m worried about you.”

“Well, you needn’t.”

“James—” Robbie starts but falters as Hathaway squares his shoulders and stands up straight as if preparing for battle. He still hasn’t completely shaken the worry that crept up on him on the drive to Loop Farm; the feeling that has been nudging at the edges of his attention since Hathaway started showing signs of sleep deprivation the end of last week, compounded by his clear lack of rest over the weekend.

Robbie is suddenly furious at the thought of James driving all over Oxfordshire to play with his band when he’s so sleep deprived. He’s risking his life for no good reason. If there’d been a car coming through the roundabout… Robbie should have put a stop to this sooner, told him to take a day off and not come in until he’d got a decent night’s sleep.

“What happened back there? There weren’t any skid marks. Did you fall asleep at the wheel?”

“I didn’t— I—” Hathaway falters. He looks conflicted like there’s something more to his denial, something that is likely wrapped up in whatever else it is that he’s been hiding from Robbie.

“It happens to the best of us when we push ourselves too far,” Robbie says.

“I know that,” Hathaway says as if he knows nothing of the sort.

“When was the last time you got a decent night’s sleep?”

Hathaway takes a deep breath. “You told me you’re worried about me, you’ve done your duty as my superior officer. Please, just leave it.”

He is still blocking the door to the living room, like he’s guarding a secret within, and looking not a bit like a man who is fine. His eyes are bright and shocky, face pale in the dim light, his left hand clenching and unclenching by his side. What is Robbie thinking? James has just been in a car wreck, that alone would put anyone out of sorts, not to mention the still unexplained other injuries. And here Robbie is badgering him about whether he’s had enough sleep. Robbie should know better than to confront James head-on, the lad could deflect for England.

“James,” Robbie says, gently this time. “Go sit down, I’ll make you a cuppa.” Hathaway looks over his shoulder toward the living room then back at Robbie. A half dozen emotions cross his face in quick succession, settling on defeat, and he turns and walks into the living room.

When Robbie comes through with the tea Hathaway is slumped on the sofa, head tilted back against the cushions, eyes closed. He’s still wearing his coat. Which he would be, wouldn’t he? With his arm in a sling like that. Robbie didn’t even offer to help. 

Even dozing Hathaway’s shoulders are tense, his left hand fisted against his thigh. Robbie surveys the coffee table as he pushes a stack of folders aside to make space for the mugs. Upon closer inspection, they are the same folders that were on Hathaway’s desk when Robbie found him in the office this morning. And, mixed in with the other detritus are two envelopes that look very much like the one Hathaway pulled off his front door; one blank and the other also with ‘James’ written on it.

Hathaway’s head snaps up at the clunk of the mugs hitting the table.

“You planning on keeping that coat on all night?” Robbie asks.

“No, I—” Robbie spares Hathaway having to ask for his help and offers.

“Here, let me,” Robbie says, gesturing toward the coat. Hathaway sits up so Robbie can pull it off his right shoulder, out from behind him, and help him get it off his left arm.

“Thanks,” Hathaway says, though it’s more a sigh than a word. He drops his head back against the cushions again. His skin is very pale against the dark purple shirt and black jeans he’s wearing, but it could be a trick of the light; the only illumination in the flat coming from the light Robbie left on over the worktop in the kitchen. He turns on the lamp on the side table and drapes Hathaway’s coat over the arm of the sofa. As he does the envelope from the door falls onto the cushion between them. Hathaway looks at him, then at the envelope, and picks it up, twisting it in the fingers of his left hand. Robbie sits down on the sofa next to him and picks up his tea.

By the time Robbie’s finished his tea Hathaway still hasn’t said anything. Waiting him out usually works, but it’s late and before long one or both of them is going to fall asleep where they sit, which isn’t going to do Robbie’s back or Hathaway’s injuries any favours.

“What happened at the roundabout?” Robbie asks. Hathaway gives him a look of resignation then leans forward, dropping the envelope on the coffee table and picking up his tea.

“I may have been going a bit over the speed limit, but not by much,” he takes a sip of his tea and makes a face. It must be cold by now. “The brakes worked fine on the way to the gig and when I started back. But when I got to the roundabout… The pedal hit the floor and the car didn’t even slow down. If it weren’t for those bushes…” he shakes his head.

“You had that tyre replaced earlier.”

Hathaway shrugs and takes another sip of tea, then another, then a third, stalling.

“And the rest of it?”

“There is no rest of it. I wrecked my car and sprained my wrist.”

“James, I can’t help you if you won’t let me in on what’s going on.”

“I told you, I don’t need any help.”

“Your lack of car and usable right hand says otherwise.”

“I don’t— I just—” Hathaway downs the last of his cold tea, setting the mug on the table with a clunk. He reaches for the whisky bottle, opens it one-handed, pours a good measure into the mug and takes a large sip.

“James.”

Hathaway turns to look at him, expression stony, “Sir.”

“Are you in some sort of trouble?”

“It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

“That’s not a no.”

“There’s no need to worry about me, sir. Thank you for your concern.”

“You’re not fooling me, you know."

James sighs and takes another sip of whisky, eyes fixed on the bookshelf on the other side of the room. He looks down at the folders on the table in front of him, then back at Robbie and lets out another sigh, his shoulders slumping in defeat. He pulls the stack of folders toward him.

“This is—” he starts, then takes another sip of whisky, puts the mug down on the table with a clunk, and runs his hand through his hair. “This isn’t the first time I’ve run across Julian Eldridge,” he says and pushes the stack of folders toward Robbie. Then he stands, grabbing the unopened envelope off the table, and heads in the direction of the loo.

Robbie watches Hathaway go before pulling the top folder off the messy stack and opening it. It is an old case file, detailing the case that led up to the arrest of Julian Eldridge. Robbie scans the arrest report. Julian Eldridge was arrested on suspicion of blackmailing his fellow Queen’s College students in May of 2005. Subsequently convicted and sentenced to three years, out in 19 months for good behaviour. Arresting officer: DS James Hathaway.

“Ah,” Robbie says to himself, flipping further through the file. Along with the standard case paperwork and notes from the initial investigation are sticky notes and ripped out notebook pages with more recent notes written by Hathaway, and two photos. The first photo is the one Hathaway sent him for the sales clerk to identify Eldridge by. The second looks like a holiday snap and shows Eldridge staring at the camera like he’s got something to prove. Robbie can tell by the look on Eldridge’s face that he’s the sort who expects his family name to elicit deference and get him out of or into anything he wants. It’s a face that expects respect without ever having done anything to earn it, or ever having respected anyone else in return.

Other folders contain transcripts of the trial and sentencing hearing, prison records, and parole records; the official details of Julian Eldridge’s life since his arrest. The final folder—also police-issue but not containing police files—holds more of Hathaway’s handwritten notes: an account of Eldridge’s father cutting him out of his inheritance and then disowning him after the conviction, records from Cambridge where Eldridge finished his degree, and printouts of news articles chronicling Eldridge going into business with a man called Wilbur Nachmann a year after Cambridge. Details of the type of business beyond ‘exciting’ and ‘innovative’ are unclear, but it seems to have made Eldridge a pile of money very quickly. The final piece of paper in the folder is a printout of a page of _The Times_ featuring an announcement of the engagement of Julian Eldridge to Juliette Nachmann, Wilbur Nachmann’s daughter.

It is all information well gathered, as Robbie would expect, but none of it provides a motive for Julian to blackmail Hannah. Or sheds any light on what’s really going on with Hathaway.


	5. Wednesday very early morning

James shuts the bathroom door and leans back against it. Fuck he’s tired. He’d like nothing more than to curl up in the bathtub and sleep for a week. That’s not going to happen, though. Neither is sorting out this whole mess on his own, it seems. 

It’s surprising Lewis let it go this long, really. James has been too tired to hide that he’s so exhausted and too exhausted to hide everything else that’s been going on. Lewis was always going to catch on, nothing James has tried to keep from him in the past has ever stayed hidden. Distinct disadvantage of having a detective for a boss. 

And yet, James can’t help thinking that if only Julie hadn’t been quite so eager to be helpful. Or he’d been able to keep Lewis from coming into the flat. Or he’d been quick enough to clear up the folders on his desk before Lewis arrived at the office this morning, yesterday morning now… 

James sighs. Maybe in this letter there will be some clue to Eldridge’s whereabouts since his last appearance on the CCTV. Something to definitively tie him to Hannah’s death so James can walk back into the living room and say, _Here it all is, we’ve got him_ , without having to show Lewis the letters. Without having to admit that a convicted criminal has got the better of him and that despite all his research James has no clue where the bastard is. 

Right.

Much more likely is that Eldridge will deem Lewis’ presence in his flat bringing in ‘other police’ and move on to whatever he considers drastic measures. Measures James is not interested in experiencing considering the current state of his car and wrist.

He opens the envelope.

_James,_

_Rough day? I would pretend sympathy, but it would be pretend. What would be the point?_

_You’re used to always being the smartest person in the room, aren’t you? I hope you’ve enjoyed it, because you aren’t anymore, even if the room is metaphorical._

_How does it feel, knowing that you’ve been beaten? Like you’re trapped? Like you’ve tried your hardest and it still isn’t good enough? Like your agency has been stripped from you? Like you’ve failed where you should have been assured victory? Like you can see your demise rushing up to meet you. Like you are stepping as hard as you can on the brakes but the car isn’t stopping. Oh, was that too soon?_

_I hope you’re feeling all of those things because that’s what you did to me. That’s what prison did to me. That’s what those closest to me finding out about the conviction and the prison sentence did to me. Stripped me of everything I deserved and left me with nothing. Less than nothing. Left me with none of the things that should have been mine by right and no way to regain any of it. You left me at the bottom with no path back to the top._

_The worst part of it, the absolute worst, was that I didn’t know the true extent of what you had done to me until years later. I thought everything had settled back to normal. I had resumed my rightful place, finished my degree, found a business partner and a life partner. I was on the threshold of the life I was always meant to have, despite my father trying to strip it from me. And then the spectre of you and prison and everything from that terrible time raised its ugly head again. It raised its head and reached out its hand and dragged me back down._

_That was you. You did that to me. If you had listened to reason back then, if you had seen that any money I squeezed out of those suckers was meant to be mine, or they wouldn’t have given it. If you had seen that I was in the right and they were in the wrong. I mean, they couldn’t even get themselves out of a problem they got themselves into in the first place. If you had seen any of that back when it would have made a difference you could have spared us both so much grief._

_There will be grief, believe me._

_I hope you’ve been enjoying my little gifts. What gifts you ask? I haven’t given you anything, you say. But you’d be wrong. I think you’ll find you’re wrong about a great many things that you’ve led yourself to believe._

_I’ve always thought it rather close-minded only to consider physical items gifts. Actions can be gifts as well. And words. Watching the effect a gift has on the receiver is a gift to the giver. I have so enjoyed watching you receive yours._

_See you around,_  
_Julian_

_PS: You guessed it was me, right? I hope you did. If you didn’t this isn’t going to be nearly as much fun as I’d hoped. Now you know it’s me you’ll have to find me if you want this to stop. That’s how this will end. You and I face to face, and not before._

Well, it’s definitely Julian Eldridge who’s been threatening him. At least he got that right. The confirmation is small comfort when this letter doesn’t give him anything less circumstantial than the previous two. Or any clue as to where Eldridge is beyond that he has to be in Oxford to be hand delivering the letters. For all James knows he’s out there in the street right now, lying in wait like some sort of phantom in the darkness.

Between the lack of sleep, the very real feeling of being watched, and the pain from his injuries, Eldridge’s campaign to unsettle him has been alarmingly effective. James does feel trapped. He’s trapped himself in his own bathroom in the vain hope that he can somehow resolve the Hannah Eldridge case without having to show Lewis the letters. That he can stave off, just a little bit longer, the inevitable look of pity and disappointment when Lewis finds out that his sergeant can’t even sort out a simple stalker on his own.

All those allusions to James’ reasons for staying in Oxford are things that Eldridge can’t possibly know. It’s nothing but Eldridge taking shots in the dark in hope of getting under James’ skin. James knows this. Eldridge used the same tactics with his Queen’s College blackmail victims; threats based on conjecture with the hope that he was close enough to the truth to keep them scared and silent.

Shit. James is letting himself be led by his own fear and that is exactly what Eldridge wants. Lewis is already giving James concerned looks, pity and disappointment won’t be far behind regardless of whether James shows him the letters. He’s only making it worse keeping the truth from Lewis. 

And the allusions can be passed off as exactly what they are, Eldridge grasping at straws. There is no possible way Eldridge can know the truth of it, so there’s no reason for Lewis to think the letters are anything but what they seem; unfounded speculation and threats contrived to put James on edge and keep him there. If there is any clue to Eldridge’s whereabouts in the letters the most rational next step is to give Lewis’ keen and better-rested eyes a go at them. 

But contemplating it still feels like walking into a minefield. A minefield that holds the very real possibility of ending their partnership for good. How many more times can Lewis forgive him for betraying his trust? For keeping things from him to try to preserve his own dignity?

He needs another drink and a good night’s sleep. One of those, at least, he can get when he returns to the living room. James sighs. Time to tell Lewis the whole truth, or most of the truth, anyway. He splashes cold water on his face with his one good hand. It does nothing to clear the cloud of exhaustion that’s hanging over him, and his reflection looks, disappointingly, as exhausted as he feels. Lewis is not wrong, he does look done in.

“Julian Eldridge was your arrest,” Lewis says when James walks through the living room door. He doesn’t look angry, but he doesn’t exactly look friendly either. He’s looking at James like he is a difficult witness, a piece of a puzzle to be solved. At this point, that’s probably all James has any right to expect.

“He was,” James says.

“And you didn’t see fit to share this information with me?”

James looks away, spinning the envelope in his hand, wishing it were a cigarette. He’s not going to smoke in the flat with Lewis here, though.

“James,” Lewis says.

“Didn’t seem relevant.” This would be his opening, but he still can’t shake the unsuppressible instinct to keep quiet, to take one last shot at throwing Lewis off the scent.

“Don’t give me that. You mean you didn’t want it to be relevant.” Lewis shakes his head, looking through the papers in front of him and picking up one of the pages ripped out of James’ notebook, waving it in his direction. “He’s blackmailing you as well, then?”

“Not exactly,” James says. “No demands of money, just booby-traps and vague threats.”

“Vague threats like you did a bit of rowing at Cambridge?”

He’s not going to be able to draw this out any longer. 

“See for yourself,” James says, dropping the latest letter in front of Lewis and gesturing toward the others on the corner of the table. Lewis picks them up and starts reading. James goes to the kitchen and grabs two clean glasses, brings them back, and pours whisky into each of them.

“Ta,” Lewis says as James hands him a glass. James paces the room, forces himself to sip his whisky, not down it all in one go, tries not to think, and waits. After a few very long minutes Lewis puts the letters down and turns to James, studying him.

“When were you going to tell me about all this?” Lewis asks. He looks like, well, a detective who’s finally got a good lead on a case. James is not keen on being that case.

“Ideally, never.”

Lewis frowns. “You’re not thinking rationally, man. You’re a police officer, you know the proper way to handle this sort of situation.”

James shrugs. He isn’t thinking rationally. At this point, he’s barely thinking properly for lack of sleep, but the more he can downplay it the faster they can get back to Hannah and Eldridge’s connection to her, and away from the reason for his lack of rational thought. “It was just some pranks.”

“James, he sabotaged your brakes. That’s more than just a prank. You’ve put your life in danger by keeping this to yourself. There’s no need for that.” Lewis is angry now, nearly shouting. 

James braces himself for the inevitable, for Lewis’ frustration to boil over into proper shouting. He deserves it, but it’s still going to hurt when it comes. “Can we please move on to the part where you tell me you don’t want to look at me and storm out of here, so I can get on with drinking myself to sleep.”

“Be serious.”

“I am. I’ve lied to you. I don’t expect you to stick around, and I know you don’t want to.” James takes an overlarge sip of whisky for an excuse to continue avoiding Lewis’ eyes.

“You do, do you?”

“You’re angry.”

“Of course I’m angry, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to help you.” 

The whisky must have gone to James’ head. He’s betrayed Lewis’ trust, Lewis can’t possibly want to help him.

“Please, sir—”

“Sit down, James.” 

James hesitates, he swallows the last of his whisky and stays standing with the coffee table as a barrier between. The barrier is good, maybe he can use it to shore up the shreds of his dignity.

“James,” Lewis says again, the look on his face says he’s not going to relent. James comes around the coffee table and sits with a groan. The painkillers the paramedics gave him are beginning to wear off and the whisky hasn’t yet made up for it.

“Did you actually think Julian Eldridge was blackmailing Hannah or was that just a convenient way to pull all those old records without anyone questioning it?” Lewis asks.

James pours himself more whisky and takes another sip before glancing at Lewis. The look of frustrated anger on his face is now edged with concern.

“Julian dropped off the radar around the time Hannah started making withdrawals. It was plausible that the cash was going to him. But no, I didn’t have any proof until you talked to that clerk and Danny recognised him from the photo.”

Lewis sighs. “The right answer for the wrong reasons. You could be disciplined for this, you know.”

“I know.”

Lewis humphs. “That never stopped you before though, did it?”

James shakes his head and takes another drink. Lewis sips his own whisky then puts his glass down on the table and picks up the first letter, turning toward James. 

“Your reasons for staying in Oxford,” he says, in the tone of voice he uses to calm distraught witnesses. “Is Eldridge holding something over you?” James shakes his head. “Whatever it is you can tell me, we’ll sort it out.”

“There’s nothing,” James says, hoping his voice sounds steadier than he feels. “It’s Eldridge’s M.O. Throw a bunch of speculation at the wall and see if it sticks, make his victims think he knows more than he possibly could.”

“You’re sure?”

“I am,” James says, looking Lewis directly in the eye and willing him to drop it. “I’m surprised he tried it on me when he knows I’ve seen him do it in the past.” 

“All right.” Lewis’ mouth turns down for a moment, then he looks away from James at the handwritten notes and the contents of the folders spread out over the coffee table. “When did you have time to do all this?” he asks, tone less harsh.

James shrugs. “Needed something to keep me busy while I wasn’t sleeping.” Lewis gives him a questioning look. “I’ve been getting calls in the middle of the night, hang-ups, since the Sunday before last. All night long. We’ve been on rota, so I couldn’t switch off my phone.”

Lewis looks down at the letter in his hand. “ _Would have thought a police detective would be more accustomed to the lack of sleep_.”

“Yep.”

“You’ve got his number, then?”

James shakes his head. “Withheld. Just like the calls Hannah answered.”

“First thing in the morning we’ll expedite records for your phone. See if we can get a match to the phone Eldridge bought,” Lewis says.

We. Lewis said we as if he somehow has a share in sorting this mess. As if he still wants to work with James even after James has lied to him again. As if he didn’t even notice the allusions to James’ feelings for him in the letters. Lewis must be genuinely worried about his safety, James does not deserve this kindness.

“So,” Lewis continues, regardless of James’ silence. “We’ve got a positive ID of Eldridge visiting the Holywell flat from Danny, the number of the phone he purchased in Abingdon in Hannah’s call history, and the corresponding withdrawals from Hannah’s account. That’s enough to get a warrant once we find out where his flat is. You must have some idea of the direction he came from after going over all that CCTV.” James nods. “But why blackmail Hannah? According to this, he made a pile of money with Nachmann. Where did it all go?”

James pulls his laptop out from under the pile of papers, all the tabs from yesterday’s research still open in the browser.

“From what I could find,” James says. “Neither Eldridge’s business partner nor his fiancé had any idea about his conviction until an ex-boyfriend of the fiancé informed them. Seems that Juliette left the ex-boyfriend for Eldridge and he was out for revenge. Once they knew, neither of the Nachmanns wanted anything to do with him. Wilbur cut him out of the business, Juliette called off the engagement, and Eldridge dropped off the radar for two months. No credit card charges, no phone calls from his last known number, no traceable movements, nothing. His last known address is the flat he was sharing with Juliette, which is owned by her father.”

“So he came down to Oxford to see his cousin and squeeze her a bit to make up for what he lost from the business? We know he was here at the start of term from Danny, so why come after you now? Why not start with the booby-traps as soon as he got to Oxford?”

James shrugs. “Too busy setting up his blackmail racket? Realised how much he didn’t like living like a regular bloke after a few months and decided it was time for revenge? Got bored?”

Lewis takes a sip of his whisky and sets the glass back on the table with a clunk. “Okay, but if he was blackmailing Hannah and she was paying what’s his motive for killing her?”

“We’re missing something,” James sighs. “Wait, there were no large amounts of money found on Hannah’s body or in her flat. She must have seen Eldridge between the Botanic Garden and the boathouse.”

“Or at the boathouse.”

“Julian was at Queen’s College.”

“Did he row?”

“No, but he had friends who did, and his father donated money to refurbish the boathouse his second year.” 

Lewis shoots him the look James so often sees when he’s come up with an obscure fact. “If Eldridge rang Hannah and told her to meet him at the boathouse she could have told the others she was going to the lab and gone there instead.”

“No way of knowing if that’s where they always met though. Knowing Eldridge he would have mixed it up,” James says.

“But it’s likely he’s gone between there and your flat at least the once. And he was outside the pub on Monday. That’s enough to go on for a CCTV search. Has he got a car?”

“I didn’t find any registered in his name. He could be using an alias.”

“Family nearby? Besides Hannah.”

“An estate not far from Hannah’s parents’. But his father disowned him after the conviction and the letters don’t make it sound like he’s had a change of heart.”

“Fingerprints?” Lewis asks.

“Shit. I didn’t even— I used gloves on the second letter, but now—” 

“I’ve handled it as well. He’s really getting to you,” Lewis says, his tone gone soft.

“Yeah,” James admits with a deep sigh, leaning his head against the cushion behind him. “Doesn’t matter anyway. Eldridge will have been careful, he won’t have left prints.”

“Still, won’t hurt to send them in. If he slipped up we’ll have something that’s more than circumstantial.”

An hour and a half later they’ve gone through plausible bus routes between the places they’re most sure Eldridge has been, which buses he’s likely to have taken at which times, likely taxi ranks and private hire companies for him to have used, and a good portion of the rest of the bottle of whisky.

They’ve got a lot of phone calls to make and leads to follow in the morning, but they finally seem to be getting somewhere. James types the last number into the spreadsheet with his left hand and leans back against sofa. It’s gone half four, and between the weight of keeping so many things from Lewis having been lifted, the whisky, and Lewis’ presence next to him, James feels something near relaxed. He settles further into the cushions. He’ll just close his eyes for a bit, let his exhaustion be an excuse for leaning into the comfort of Lewis’ warmth, and get back to the research in a minute.


	6. Wednesday afternoon

A bright light is shining in James’ face. He opens his eyes a fraction, squinting at the open curtains and his living room ceiling. He’s lying on the sofa, a blanket covering him. His mouth tastes foul, his eyes feel like sandpaper, and he’s got a crick in his neck to go with the ache in his ribs and wrist. He’s still wearing the clothes from last night’s gig.

Last night.

“Sir?” James says. There’s no answer. Lewis has gone home, of course. Unless he’s asleep in James’ bed. A pleasant thought, but not even a little bit likely. 

James remembers the two of them sitting side by side on the sofa—Lewis once again willing to help him despite everything—pouring over case files and notes, a long list of phone numbers to call and places to visit. But he has no memory of Lewis leaving, of lying down on the sofa or pulling the blanket off the armchair to cover himself. Did he fall asleep while Lewis was still here? Did Lewis cover him with the blanket? Tuck him in? He can’t let himself believe it. That would be above and beyond even Lewis’ seemingly boundless capacity for forgiveness. 

James sits up and runs his hands through his hair, the motion nudging the crick in his neck over toward full-blown headache. He eyes the whisky bottle, now almost empty. Perched on top of the detritus of research next to the bottle is a note from Lewis, scrawled on the back of one of the pages pulled from James’ notebook.

_Take the morning off. No arguing. I think I can be trusted to handle the case by myself for half a day. I don’t want to see or hear from you before noon. Ring me when you’ve had some proper sleep._

James looks at his watch, it’s quarter to one. He can’t remember the last time he slept so late or so long. With a groan, he stands stiffly and stretches, letting the blanket fall to the floor as he heads to the bathroom. He takes out his contacts, brushes his teeth, takes some paracetamol, and showers—a frustrating endeavour without proper use of his right hand. By the time he walks into the kitchen to make coffee, towel slung around his waist, he’s beginning to feel human again.

Only the tin he keeps coffee beans in is suspiciously light. Right. He hasn’t had a chance to get to the shops. James sighs. Coffee run it is, then. He pulls on old jeans, a t-shirt, and his coat, and heads out the door. As the dull ache in his wrist reminds him, he hasn’t got a car, he’s not driving to his favourite coffee shop. But it’s a quick walk to his second favourite. He lights a cigarette and pulls out his phone to ring Lewis on the way.

“You just getting up?” Lewis asks when he answers the phone.

“Half an hour ago,” James says. “On my way to get coffee.”

“Got some proper sleep then, did you?”

“Surprisingly, yes.” Not a single hang-up. Whether that’s a good sign or a bad sign, other than the fact that it means he got decent sleep, is too soon to tell. It doesn’t sit well that Eldridge would stop harassing him right after threatening escalation. 

“Good. I’ve got Gurdip monitoring that pay as you go phone. He says it’s switched off now but as soon as it’s back on he’ll be able to triangulate where Eldridge is. Meanwhile, I’ve got a lead on some potential mates of Eldridge’s over at a jazz club down the Cowley Road called The Moonlight Room.”

James has passed by the club more than once on days he’s walked to work instead of driving, it’s less than a half mile from his flat. Eldridge has been right under his nose this whole time.

“You ever been there?” Lewis asks.

“I go in more for churches, and pubs with short ceilings and bad acoustics,” James says.

“Well, venture down there anyway on your way to the nick. And get those letters down to forensics.”

“Sir, I—”

“I’m aware that you don’t want anyone to know about them, including me,” Lewis says. James can hear the exasperated look Lewis would be giving him in his tone. “But after last night I think things have gone a bit too far be ignoring potential evidence.”

“Yes, sir,” James says and rings off. Lewis is right, of course. Any chance that there’s even a partial print of Eldridge’s on those letters would give them something more than circumstantial evidence. And they very much need that regardless of how embarrassing it will be to have forensics scrutinising the letters.

When James returns with his coffee, already half gone, there is another enveloped taped to his door. Eldridge is close by, or he was until very recently, to have left the envelope in the short time James was out. 

James turns around and surveys the street. There is no sign of Eldridge. No sign of anything out of the ordinary; no visible lurkers, no battery hidden next to the steps, no wires leading to the latch. It’s unlikely that Eldridge would pull the same prank twice, but all the same, James taps the latch with one finger to test before putting his key in the lock. Nothing happens. He grabs the envelope off the door and goes inside.

His name is written across the envelope in the same calligraphy as the others, but this one is thicker than the previous three. Something more than the usual folded sheets of paper inside. Is the envelope itself another trap? James sighs. It’s not like waiting to open it is going to make the outcome any better if it is.

James grabs his gloves out of his coat pocket, puts them on, and rips the end off the envelope, shaking the contents out onto a somewhat clear section of the coffee table. A letter falls out, along with four photos. Nothing jumps out at him or explodes. Of course it doesn’t, it’s a flat paper envelope. 

The first photo is dark and grainy. In it he and Lewis are sitting close together on his sofa, hunched over the coffee table with their heads bent toward each other in conversation. The coffee table is strewn with the same files and notes it contains now. Eldridge was right here watching them while they were working out how to track him down. James gets up and goes to the window behind him, looking up and down the street again. Still no sign of Eldridge. Would he have seen him last night if he’d only turned and looked out the window? James shuts the curtains. 

The second photo is brighter but still dim, the thin grey light of just past dawn falling across Lewis who is standing with his hand on the latch of his front door. His anorak is unzipped and he is wearing the suit he had on yesterday. Which means this was taken after Lewis left James’ flat while James was asleep on the sofa.

The third photo shows Lewis in his kitchen wearing blue pyjamas, a mug raised halfway to his mouth. From the angle, it was taken through the kitchen window.

In the fourth photo, Lewis is standing at a bus shelter talking to a woman wearing a red pea coat and a striped scarf that obscures most of her face. It’s cropped in too close to see anything but that it’s a bus shelter. Lewis is wearing his anorak, unzipped again, and a different suit to yesterday.

The photos are numbered one through four, removing any doubt about the progression of time from one to the next. James unfolds the letter.

_My Dear James,_

_All those sleepless nights finally caught up with you, did they? I thought you’d like to know what your dear old boss was up to while you were dead to the world. As you can see he’s fine, he’ll continue to be fine as long as you play along._

_It was awfully sweet of him to spend all night trying to help you solve your little problem. I didn’t realise that was within the purview of inspectors. That’s a special relationship you’ve got there. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to change it. But I think you may have forgotten my earlier instructions. No other police. I’m sorry to say your boss counts as other police._

_Do you remember that choice I mentioned in my first letter? Now is the time to make it. It comes down to this: either you or him. He’s old, past his prime, you’ve still got more than a few good years left in you. In the larger scheme of things, it makes more sense for it to be him. I have a feeling you’re not going to be sensible about this, though. In fact, I very much hope you won’t._

_So this is what’s going to happen, either you come to me or I’ll go to him. Be at the Beaconsfield service area on the M40 no later than 16:00. You’ll find instructions in the third stall from the end in the gents. If you decide not to join me you’ve got until 16:00 to say goodbye._

_And, James, unless you want it to be the last time you ever speak to him, no warning him, no contacting him. I’ll know if you do. Don’t believe me? Well, you could try it anyway I suppose, risk your dear old boss’ health and well-being to find out how serious I am._

_See you soon,_  
_Julian_

Well, that’s that then, Eldridge has got his number both literally and figuratively. It’s almost a relief to finally have an ultimatum, to no longer have the spectre of the next escalation hanging over his head. He knows what he needs to do now, Eldridge is threatening Lewis and James is going to walk right into this very obvious trap.

Beaconsfield is a less than an hour away by car, but it’s nearly half two and there’s no way he’ll make it in time without one. Eldridge knows that. Shit. Does Eldridge not mean for him to be able to make it in time? Has the point been to harm Lewis all along?

No. Eldridge said this would end with them face to face. So, he does mean for James to be able to get to Beaconsfield. Calm the fuck down and think, Hathaway. He pulls out a cigarette and lights it, taking a long drag. This morning he got more sleep than he has any night for the past week, but he’s still not anywhere near as clear-headed as he’d like to be. He takes another long drag.

Okay. He doesn’t have a car. He can’t call Lewis. He can’t bring in any other police. Police. The motor pool. His car’s been wrecked and he’s got an open murder investigation. No one will question him signing out a car.

James grabs the letter and his cigarettes off the coffee table and rushes out the door. A bus pulls up minutes after he arrives at the stop nearest his flat, saving him the extra time it would have taken to walk to the nick.

He can’t risk the desk sergeant or the possibility that Lewis is at the station, so he heads around the back, lighting another cigarette on the way as a cover for why he’s coming from the car park, not inside the building. There’s no need for the cover though, a trainee PC is on the motor pool desk, all, “Yes, sergeant. Of course, sergeant.” James signs the log and the PC hands over the keys with a somewhat terrified look and no small talk. Someone’s been gossiping in the canteen, but he’s got more pressing things to deal with today.

* * *

There’s no traffic once he’s out of Oxford and James makes it to Beaconsfield with fifteen minutes to spare. The service area is surreal with its bright lights and people going about their normal lives as if Robbie Lewis’ life wasn’t potentially in danger. As if there wasn’t some sinister force lurking in the gathering darkness outside the reach of the car park lights.

The door to third stall down is locked, and James is banging on it, shouting for Eldridge to come out, before his brain catches up with his actions.

“Fuck off,” comes the returning shout from inside the stall. Then the toilet flushes, and the door is wrenched open to reveal a heavy-set bloke a good two inches taller than James. Not Eldridge.

“Out of my way, tosser,” the man says and pushes past James before he can form an apology. James doesn’t turn around to see if the man has left, he enters the stall and locks the door behind him.

It’s nothing but a bathroom stall; beige walls, toilet, toilet paper dispenser. No letters, no obvious instructions. Nothing hidden under or taped to the toilet paper dispenser. He eyes the toilet, nothing obvious from above. James kneels down in the narrow space and reaches behind the bowl, feeling around behind it blindly, his face inches from the seat. He holds his breath and keeps his eyes on the cement block wall behind the toilet, trying not to think about how disgusting being this close to a public toilet is. Eldridge, wherever he is, is no doubt laughing at the very idea of James grovelling on the floor in front of the toilet. James’ hand touches paper, he grabs it and pulls.

It is an envelope, same thick, cream-coloured paper as all the others, same ‘James’ written on the front in calligraphy. He tears it open and unfolds the single sheet of paper inside. It’s not a letter this time so much as a note. GPS coordinates and at the bottom of the page: _Oh, did you think I sent you over here because it was convenient? Surprise! -J_

James sighs and leans his head back against the stall. His wrist aches, he should have re-wrapped it after he showered. Or not banged on the stall door with his right hand. He needs another cigarette. And more coffee. And another shower, but settles for washing his hands and face as thoroughly as possible before leaving the loo.

The GPS coordinates point to an address in Witney, the opposite side of Oxford from Beaconsfield. Eldridge must have come all this way to hide the note just so he could make James drive the opposite direction before doubling back. Assuming this Witney address isn’t also a runaround. Whatever else he may be—a bastard mostly—Eldridge is dedicated.

The weather turns as James drives back toward Oxford and by the time he’s been on the road for thirty minutes it’s pelting down rain. Even with the windscreen wipers at full tilt, he can hardly see through the watery dark to the road in front of him.

Forty-five minutes into the drive he passes through the same roundabout in which he wrecked his car the previous night. He has the passing thought that Eldridge has somehow sabotaged the brakes of this car as well, but he makes it out the other side in one piece. A little less than an hour in, navigating smaller, winding roads his wrist is beginning to hurt in earnest. A little more than an hour in, his phone tells him he has arrived in front of an overgrown dirt track.

Branches scrape the sides of the car as he turns down the drive, adding an eerie soundtrack to the passage of the headlights down the lane. It’s already full dark, but even in daylight, he doubts he’d be able to see much through the encroaching hedges. Finally, the track opens up into a circular driveway. A stone house looms in front of him, hulking and dark, like something out of a children’s tale rife with curses and ghosts and things that stalk in the night.

With the car off the rain sounds louder than ever and he almost misses his phone beep, alerting him to a new voicemail. He didn’t hear it ring. No service, his phone flashes, then one bar, then back to no service. The voicemail is from Lewis, left a half hour ago.

“You still at The Moonlight Room? Would have thought you’d be back here by now. If you get this before you leave try asking about an Edward Jasper. Word has it Eldridge has been living under that name since he moved here. I’ve got Julie tracking down an address for the alias now. Ring me when you’re done over there. We can compare notes at a proper pub.”

“Sorry, sir. I wish I could,” James says, leaning his head against the steering wheel. He was so focused on getting to Beaconsfield on time he’d completely forgotten Lewis’ earlier instructions. But Eldridge isn’t going to be at The Moonlight Room anyway. James sighs and stays leaning against the steering wheel for long minutes, listening to the pounding rain and prolonging the inevitable, until the position becomes too much of a strain on his ribs and he has to sit up. 

He looks out across the rainy darkness toward the house. He’d half expected Eldridge to have come out to greet him by now. But he can see no other cars among the hulking shapes of untrimmed plantings lurking along the edges of the drive. Or maybe this really is a runaround and Eldridge isn’t here after all. Only one way to find out.

James flips his coat collar up and makes a dash for the front door. He stops on the threshold in the relative shelter of the overhanging lintel, this is his last chance to not walk straight into the trap Eldridge has set for him. But who is he kidding? It’s either him or Lewis, and it can’t be Lewis.

The front door is unlocked, he pushes it open, pulls his torch out of his coat pocket, and shines the light into the dark interior. No obvious booby-traps, but then neither were any of the others. He edges forward expecting trip wires and things crashing down on his head with every step. Nothing happens. The torch beam illuminates the house in disconnected circles: part of a sofa that looks like animals have been living in it; wallpaper sloughing off the walls in sheets, casting strange tentacle-like shadows beyond; dirt and leaves and glass on the floor under a broken window; a painting of a scowling man, its frame askew.

James looks into every room on the ground floor and finds nothing. No Eldridge, no traps, nothing to indicate that anyone’s been here in years.

“Eldridge!” he shouts into the darkness. “I’m here. Come get me.” All he gets in answer is the sound of the rain pounding on the roof and distant drips. First floor, then.

At the top of the stairs is a long hallway, he flashes the torch through open doors as he goes, some of them hanging half off their hinges. Every room brings more illuminated circles of the crumbling remnants of someone’s life caught in the torch beam. In some rooms, he hears the skittering of startled animals but doesn’t see any. The last two doors are closed. He opens the one closest to him first and stifles a shout, ducking as bats fly past his head.

He opens the final door. Again, nothing but more decaying pieces of a left-behind life. Maybe he’s not in the right place. Maybe he’s wandering around some random abandoned house while Eldridge is going after Lewis. He turns around, shining the torch back down the hallway the way he came. The only door he hasn’t checked is the one with the staircase to the second floor, which from the pitch of the roof is likely to be an attic.

He hears something in the room behind him, barely audible over the still pounding rain, footsteps on fallen wallpaper. James half turns, a sharp pain blooms at the back of his head, and everything goes dark.


	7. Wednesday evening

It’s going on four hours since Hathaway said he was getting coffee before stopping by The Moonlight Room on his way to the station, and Robbie has seen neither hide nor hair of him. Nor has Hathaway answered any of Robbie’s calls, or rung him back, or texted. 

He must have come across another lead, followed that up first, and still be at The Moonlight Room. His phone must have just run out of charge. Any minute now Hathaway will walk through the office door with a sheepish look and a reasonable explanation for his absence. Unless his accumulated injuries are bothering him so much that he’s gone back to his flat. It is nearly six, after all. Except that Hathaway’s never been one to go home at quitting time, even when in pain, and especially not when they’ve got an open investigation. 

More likely is that Hathaway’s overactive sense of guilt and embarrassment has overridden his better judgement and he is avoiding Robbie again. Robbie really had thought he’d put a stop to all that nonsense in the predawn hours; made it clear that whatever it is that Eldridge is holding over the lad won’t matter to him. Not clear enough, apparently. Despite everything Hathaway let on about last night, Robbie is sure the stubborn sod is still holding out on him. 

Robbie rings Hathaway again, and again it goes straight to voicemail. He’s already checked with the desk sergeant, and Gurdip, and called down to forensics to see if Hathaway dropped the letters by for fingerprinting. Nothing. No one has seen him. 

Hathaway is an adult and a police officer, he can take care of himself. It’s not unusual for them to be out of communication with each other for hours during the day while they’re tracking down separate leads. In the course of a normal case not hearing from Hathaway for this amount of time wouldn’t even register; it didn’t register until Robbie got back to the nick after running down his own leads to find no sign of Hathaway. But this is no longer a normal case, and Robbie’s mind keeps supplying him with scenarios of what Eldridge’s next escalation will look like, each more serious than the last. The imagined scenarios helped along by the memory of the worry that gripped his chest upon hearing _it’s Sergeant Hathaway_ , followed by _there’s been an accident_ , and the image of James passed out on a bed in a burning building all those years ago.

Enough of this nonsense. He’s not doing anyone any good sitting here waiting. If Hathaway is at The Moonlight Room Robbie will meet him there, and if he’s not Robbie still needs to check there before he checks anywhere else. He grabs his anorak off the back of the door and heads out of the office.

The Moonlight Room is nearly empty this early in the evening, only a couple of punters down the far end of the bar, the sort who are permanent fixtures. The barman hasn’t seen anyone matching Hathaway’s description, but he does recognise the photo of Julian Eldridge.

“That’s Ward, yeah. He’s in here most nights round nine. What do you want with him?”

“Ward as in Edward Jasper?”

The barman narrows his eyes at him. “That’s the one.”

Robbie looks at his watch, it’s quarter past six. Plenty of time to stop by Hathaway’s flat, gather him, and come back here to intercept Eldridge. 

“Thanks for your help,” Robbie says to the barman on his way out the door. The barman nods and goes back to polishing glasses.

* * *

Hathaway’s flat is dark when Robbie pulls up to the kerb, and the worry he’s been trying to dispel most of the afternoon coalesces into a sickening weight in his gut. He knocks on the door. No answer. He tries Hathaway’s phone again, listening for the sound of it ringing from within the flat. Still nothing. He sends another text. Also nothing.

Robbie was more than half expecting Hathaway to open the door to him with a ready and transparent excuse. He’d prepared himself to bowl right over Hathaway’s inevitable insistence that he was fine, to push his way into the flat regardless of how much Hathaway tried to prevent it, and sit the lad down on the sofa for another talk. 

Maybe between the lack of sleep and his injuries Hathaway is exhausted enough to sleep through his phone ringing and Robbie banging on the door? That must be it. But if it’s not…

“Sod it,” Robbie mutters. He gets back in his car, drives to his flat, and retrieves the spare key to Hathaway’s flat from the kitchen drawer. This is a breach of privacy Hathaway won’t thank him for later, but Robbie will deal with that when he knows the lad is safe.

Hathaway’s living room is in the same state as Robbie left it early this morning, save for the lack of his sergeant sleeping on the sofa. There is no sleeping sergeant in the bed either, no sign of him anywhere in the flat. Back in the living room the blanket Robbie had covered Hathaway with is in a ball on the floor between the sofa and the coffee table. Case files are still spread across the table, with the addition of another cream-coloured envelope with ‘James’ written on it, and four photos. The photos are of himself and James on this very sofa, of himself in front of his flat, himself in his flat through the kitchen window, and himself earlier today when he was running down leads on the Broad. Eldridge has been following both of them.

This looks very much like escalation. But there’s no letter on the table, or under it, or anywhere else Robbie can find. Which means if there is a letter Hathaway has taken it with him. Robbie picks up the previous letters, their presence on the coffee table further confirmation that Hathaway hasn’t been to the nick, and reads through them again. Eldridge hinted at his next moves in the first letters, even if the hints were only obvious in hindsight, but that leaves a good probability that the letters contain clues to what he’s planning next.

_You will have a choice, it will be a simple choice, but not an easy one._

_I know where you live just like I know where you work and where your dear old boss lives._

_No other police or I may be forced to take drastic measures._

_There will be grief, believe me._

_Now you know it’s me you’ll have to find me if you ever want this to stop. That’s how this will end. You and I face to face, and not before._

_Face to face. A simple choice, but not an easy one. Drastic measures_ , and those four photos, all of which Robbie is in and only one of which Hathaway is. Robbie doesn’t need the final letter to see where this is headed. Eldridge is threatening to harm Robbie to get Hathaway to do something that would put himself in danger. Hathaway will do it too, maybe already has done, because he would put the safety of others before his own. Hathaway must know that Robbie wouldn’t want him to risk his own safety, especially for his sake, and that Robbie would try to talk him out of it. Which would be why he’s not been answering Robbie’s calls. Dammit.

Robbie picks up the letters and the rest of the case files and heads back to the station.

* * *

After leaving the letters with forensics, Robbie checks in with Gurdip. Still no activity on Eldridge’s pay as you go phone. He has Gurdip run a trace on Hathaway’s phone as well, with the same result. If only he’d had Gurdip trace Hathaway’s phone the first time he didn’t answer, but Robbie hadn’t been worried enough a few short hours ago for that to seem necessary.

Robbie sits down at his desk with the photos and the folders from Hathaway’s flat, laying the photos out in front of him, but without the accompanying letter there is nothing more to be gleaned. He finds himself staring at the photo of himself and James on the sofa. They are sitting shoulder to shoulder, heads bent together, leaning into each other. And then there was the look on James’ face when Robbie had asked if Eldridge was holding something over him, the careful deliberateness of his dismissal of Eldridge’s words as nothing but unfounded scare tactics. 

Suddenly Robbie’s throat is tight and the photo goes a bit watery around the edges. If Eldridge has harmed James in any way… If he’s done anything that will keep the two of them from sitting like that in the future…

Robbie scrubs his hand over his face and sits up straight. His sergeant is out of communication for a few hours and he’s gone all maudlin, already jumping to the worst possible conclusion. Maybe it is time to start seriously thinking about retirement again once this is all sorted. He has got to pull himself together.

He calls down to Dispatch to send a uniform patrol out to go by the locations from the list he and Hathaway compiled early this morning. Possibly one of the people Robbie talked to earlier in the day has seen Eldridge with Hathaway since. He’s about to grab a dubious sandwich and a cup of weak coffee from the cafeteria before going back out himself when Julie Lockhart knocks on the doorframe and sticks her head in.

“Phone records came back for you,” she says, handing him a folder. “And I found an address for Edward Jasper.”

“Thanks, Julie,” Robbie says, flipping through the folder.

Julie doesn’t leave, she stays standing halfway between his desk and the door with the look of someone who wants an answer to a question they are afraid to ask.

“Spit it out,” Robbie says.

“It may not be my place, sir. But is something going on with Sergeant Hathaway? I couldn’t help but notice that those records are for his phone.”

“Aye,” he says. It comes out more of a sigh than a proper word.

“Is he— Is Sergeant Hathaway all right? It’s just after the wreck last night, and I haven’t seen him all day.”

“I wish I knew.”

“Sir?”

“Sergeant Hathaway has been unreachable since sometime after one, and these records confirm that the harassing phone calls he’s been receiving are from the pay as you go phone that Eldridge bought.”

“Has Eldridge been blackmailing him as well?”

“We don’t know for sure that Eldridge was blackmailing Hannah, but Hathaway assures me he’s not being blackmailed. The wreck was Julian Eldridge’s doing, though. He’s been laying traps and sending threatening letters.”

“You think Eldridge has something to do with Sergeant Hathaway being incommunicado?”

“I can’t rule out that possibility.” Julie gives him a sad smile. “I’ve got confirmation from the barman at The Moonlight Room that Eldridge is going by Edward Jasper. That plus the number of the mobile he bought showing up in both Hannah and Hathaway’s phone records should be enough to get us a warrant to search Edward Jasper’s flat.”

“I’ll get on that right away, sir.”

“Thank you, Julie,” Robbie says. “Do what you can, and ring me as soon as you hear anything. I’ll go over to the flat and if I don’t find him there I’ll wait for Eldridge at The Moonlight Room.”

“Yes, sir,” Julie says and rushes out the door.

Eldridge’s flat is dark and neither ringing the bell or knocking raises anyone. An echo of his attempt to find Hathaway earlier. Robbie goes back to the car and watches the flat for the amount of time it takes to eat his mediocre cafeteria sandwich. He rings Hathaway again, and again gets his voicemail. Then he waits a bit more. And some more. At quarter to nine he gives it up as the waste of time it is and leaves for The Moonlight Room. If the barman was telling the truth Eldridge is likely to be arriving for his evening pint shortly.

* * *

There is no one even remotely fitting Eldridge’s description when Robbie arrives at The Moonlight Room. He orders a pint and retreats to a corner booth with a good view of the door, nursing it slowly. He waits and he sips his pint, and he waits some more. The entertainment is entertaining at least, the singer’s got quite a set of pipes on her.

It’s past ten and Robbie is down to the dregs of his second pint when a skinny bloke with dark hair comes through the door. Robbie watches as he greets the bartender and half the blokes seated at the bar like old friends, pulls out a wad of cash and buys them all a round. After chatting a bit with the bartender and the bloke next to him, he turns to lean back against the bar, watching the entertainment, and Robbie gets a good look at his face. It’s Julian Eldridge.

Robbie downs the last swallow of his beer and moves to the bar, coming up behind Eldridge who is, by all appearances, engrossed in the show.

“Edward Jasper,” Robbie says, placing his empty glass on the bar. “Or is it Julian Eldridge?” 

Eldridge whips around, a look of incredulity on his face, before it hardens into a sneer of recognition.

“What do you want?”

“Playing that game are we?” Robbie says, showing Eldridge his warrant card. “Where is Sergeant Hathaway?”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“And I’m sure that you do. Why don’t we have a chat about that somewhere more private?”

“There’s a nice booth over there,” Eldridge says, pointing behind Robbie.

“I had somewhere else in mind.”

“I’d rather not,” Eldridge says.

“Well, that’s too bad for you, isn’t it?” Robbie says and takes some satisfaction in the way Eldridge deflates a bit before he takes one last sip of his pint and precedes Robbie out the door.

* * *

“Let me ask you that question again,” Robbie says once he’s sat across the interview table from Eldridge. “Where is Sergeant Hathaway?”

“Lost your sergeant, have you? What a shame. There aren’t many out there like him are there?” Eldridge affects a look of innocence, it doesn’t fit well with his features. “What makes you think I know where he is?”

Robbie places the four photos on the table one by one.

“If that proved anything,” Eldridge says. “It would only be that Sergeant Hathaway was wherever that is, with you.”

“These photos were accompanied by a letter from you that proves that you know exactly where they were taken.”

Eldridge looks nonplussed. “If you’ve got the letter why are you still asking me where Sergeant Hathaway is?”

“I don’t have it as it turns out, but thank you for confirming its existence. Where did you send him?”

“Oh, is it illegal now to suggest someone might like to go to a certain spot?”

“It’s not. Unless it’s under threat of harm. Over the past week you’ve threatened Sergeant Hathaway multiple times, followed through on some of those threats causing injuries, and last night you sabotaged his brakes.”

“You can’t prove any of that,” Eldridge says with a smile that makes Robbie want to punch him in his smirking mouth.

“I have three letters in which the author threatens Sergeant Hathaway and takes responsibility for threats already carried out, the third of which is signed ‘Julian,’ and all of which allude to the signer having been arrested by Sergeant Hathaway. Quite a coincidence wouldn’t you say?”

“Quite,” Eldridge says. “But I don’t see any letters.”

“There’s no need for you to. Just know that forensics is going over them for fingerprints as we speak.”

Eldridge laughs, a harsh sound in the small room. “Good luck with that.”

“Tell me where he is. If you’ve hurt him. If he—”

“Are you threatening me, officer? I don’t think you’re meant to do that.”

Robbie finds that he’s leaning across the table, hands grasping Eldridge’s shirt. He has no memory of standing or moving at all. He lets go of Eldridge and steps back just as there’s a knock on the door. Julie sticks her head in.

“Got the warrant, sir,” she says.

“Thank you, Julie,” Robbie replies and turns back to Eldridge.

Eldridge is looking a bit less sure of himself than he did moments ago.

“You hear that? We’ve got a warrant to search your flat.”

Eldridge laughs again, a sharp bark of a sound, clearly trying to cover up for his own nervousness. “Go ahead and search, you won’t find anything.”

“Very sure of yourself, aren’t you? I’ve got a few more questions before I go.”

“I decline to speak anymore without my solicitor present,” Eldridge says, folding his hands neatly on the table in front of him, the bastard.

“Where is your solicitor?”

“London.”

“Convenient.”

Eldridge smirks and reaches into his pocket to pull out a card. “This is his information, but I doubt you’ll get a hold of him this time of night.”

“I can keep you here until I do,” Robbie says.

Eldridge shrugs. “Do what you have to.”

Robbie steps out into the corridor to make the call. No answer of course. He leaves a voicemail, then contemplates driving up to London to drag the lawyer out of bed himself. He wants nothing more that to walk back into the interview room and make Eldridge tell him where James is, regardless of how inadmissible anything Eldridge says would be. But as much as he wants that right now, he knows how horrible he’d feel if that bollocksed up their ability to prosecute Eldridge for his part in Hannah’s death.

Eldridge’s flat then. Maybe he can find a clue that leads to Hathaway’s whereabouts before the lawyer’s even made it to Oxford. He’s just turning to go when he hears his name called down the corridor. CS Innocent is walking toward him, a look of frustrated determination on her face. 

“I’ve just had a call from Judge Stewart,” Innocent says, stopping next to Robbie. “Informing me that a PC has been ringing every magistrate in the district trying to get a rush warrant in connection with an investigation in which one of my officers has been kidnapped. Why is a call from someone outside my own station the first I’m hearing of this?” 

“Sorry, ma’am. I told PC Lockhart to do what she could. I didn’t realise—”

“Who has been kidnapped?”

“I wouldn’t call it kidnapped, I think Hathaway walked into it on purpose.”

“Walked into what?”

“That’s just the problem, ma’am. I don’t know. But he does,” Robbie says gesturing back toward the interview room. Innocent now looks more concerned than frustrated.

“I think you’d better bring me up to speed,” Innocent says. “My office.”

Robbie sighs and follows.

* * *

In recounting everything to Innocent Robbie feels extra sympathy for Hathaway and the way he had grilled him about these same details the night before. It’s become glaringly obvious as he says it aloud, that he should have brought the connection between Eldridge and Hathaway to Innocent earlier. But when he was following one thread to the next, first with Hathaway and then to find Hathaway, he had been focused only on each subsequent thread. When Robbie gets to the end of his tale Innocent fixes him with a piercing look.

“I don’t think I need to tell you that should have brought this to me as soon as you found out.”

“No, ma’am.”

Her look turns sympathetic. “But I wouldn’t have expected you to behave any differently where James is concerned.”

Robbie isn’t sure how to respond to that, so he keeps his mouth shut and waits.

“By rights, I should pull you off this case altogether. I can’t let you continue to interview Eldridge on your own,” Robbie starts to protest and Innocent holds up her hand to quiet him. “But I can see that you’ll chew your own leg off if I leave you sitting idle for too long. I’ll get Grainger down here to sit in with you.”

Robbie can’t help making a face at that.

“I assume you’d prefer him to Peterson?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Good. Meanwhile, you’ve got the warrant for Eldridge’s flat. I’ll ring you as soon as we’re in touch with Eldridge’s lawyer and Grainger is here and brought up to speed. The files are all in your office?”

“On my desk, yes. Plus, the photos in the interview room and the letters down in forensics.”

“Good. And you’ve put a trace on James’ phone I take it, as well as Eldridge’s pay as you go phone?”

“Yes,” Robbie says, shaking his head. “No luck on either.”

“Robbie.” Innocent puts a hand on his arm. He looks up at her, her expression is kind, showing nothing of the frustrated superior officer. “We’ll find him.”


	8. Wednesday late night

James wakes to pain, and cold, and dark, in the unearthly quiet of the middle of the night. It’s no longer raining, and a thin strip of moonlight is shining through the oddly shaped window high above him. No, not high above, he’s on the floor. He isn’t wearing his coat or his shoes. His ankles and wrists are tied.

Shit.

He aches all over, his ribs, his head, his lower back, his shoulders. His arms are pulled behind his back at an awkward angle by the bindings. His right arm doesn’t feel all there, tingling and half numb. How long has he been lying here? Where is here? The house presumably, the trap he willingly walked into. Well, he was right about it being a trap anyway.

He can just make out the wall in front of him in the dim light, but it’s too dark to tell much detail. The wall is made up of horizontal bars broken up by hanging shapes that must be more peeling wallpaper. If his arms weren’t tied so tight he’d be able to touch it and prove his theory. He turns his head to get a better look at the rest of the room and hisses as pain shoots up his arm from his wrist and down from the sore spot on the back of his head. He sees stars and has to concentrate on his breathing for a long minute until the pain subsides to a dull roar.

Shit. Didn’t think this through, did you, Hathaway?

“Eldridge!” James shouts, sending an icepick of pain through his head again. There is no answer. His shout is muffled as if the room itself has sucked up all the sound. It smells of dry rot and dust. There is a skittering in the opposite corner of the room.

He shuffles sideways and tries to sit up to take some of the pressure off his shoulders and wrist. His shoulders connect with something hard, more pain in a sharp line across his upper back, the sound of wood scraping on wood, and a watery clunk as something falls to the floor beside him. He shuffles forward, sitting up more cautiously this time, and doesn’t hit anything.

The thing he hit is a table which he’d been half lying underneath, the underside of it indistinguishable from the ceiling in the dark. James shuffles sideways until he can lean against the table leg. His foot connects with something as he does, sending it rolling across the floor. He squints into the darkness.

No longer half under the table, the window is normal shaped and the room larger, though not by much. It is an attic room, the ceiling sloped low.

Besides the window and the table, the only thing he can make out in the dark is a door in the opposite wall, and what looks like a water bottle on its side in front of it. James sighs and leans back against the table leg, which sends another shooting pain up his right arm. He adjusts his position until he’s leaning on his left arm, but he isn’t able to relieve the pressure of the bindings on his right wrist. His whole arm is pins and needles, blood rushing back now that he’s sitting up, and the pain in his wrist has moved on from throbbing to something else entirely.

Maybe he should have stayed on the floor and let his arm stay numb. He can’t see his wrist, but he can only imagine the worst.

“Eldridge!” James shouts, “I know you’re here. What do you want from me?” The sound is less muffled now he’s not lying under the table, but he can’t shake the feeling that his voice doesn’t carry beyond the room. That he’s doing nothing more than shouting into the unsympathetic dark.

“Is this it? You’re going to tie me up in a room and leave me here?” He bangs his head back against the table and, _oh God_ , that was a mistake. He holds very still and breathes as a wave of pain and nausea overtakes him. His heart is racing, his mouth dry. Fuck. This is not good.

And he’s thirsty. So thirsty. When was the last time he had something to drink? Or eat for that matter? Earlier today, if it’s even still Wednesday. Whisky last night before passing out on the sofa, coffee and a couple of cigarettes before finding the letter. More coffee at the service area. No wonder he feels like such utter shite.

“Eldridge!” James shouts again, still to no effect save for the increasing pain in his head. It takes longer this time for the pain to subside to a level that allows him to think even somewhat clearly.

Okay. The facts. What are the facts? Something to concentrate on other than the pain.

Eldridge was here waiting for him. He can only assume it was Eldridge since he walked right into that trap within a trap and never even saw his assailant. And now here he is tied up in an attic room, no Eldridge to be found. The facts don’t make sense. Eldridge said it would end with them face to face, and yet he’s not here. He must be coming back then. Or he is here and is sitting somewhere in the house listening to James. But that doesn’t seem like Eldridge. Now that he’s got James to himself, why listen from afar when he could taunt him face to face?

Nothing makes sense. He must be missing something. If only he could think through the pain. And the cold. He was a bit underdressed for the temperature even with his coat over his t-shirt. He liked that coat. Hopefully, Eldridge hasn’t destroyed it.

The longer he sits still the more the cold seeps into his bones. His fingers and toes are starting to go numb, whether from the cold or being tied he can’t tell. He shivers, brings his knees up in front of him as close to his chest as he can. He’s still cold. Moving would help with that. Maybe by some incredible stroke of luck the door isn’t locked.

The door. And the water bottle, if the object on the floor by the door is what it looks like.

James shuffles sideways then up onto his knees—a slow, jerky forward motion with his arms tied behind his back—and starts a shambling knee-walk across the floor. Every forward motion sends a spike of pain through his right wrist. His jeans catch on nails sticking out of the ratty floorboards as he goes, one jabbing into his knee hard enough that he’s sure he must be bleeding. He keeps going. 

Three-quarters of the way across the incredibly long eight feet to the door another wave of nausea hits. He stops, swaying on his knees. It takes everything he has to not overbalance. He closes his eyes and breathes through it before he can carry on.

Finally, he collapses against the wall by the door, exhausted from the journey across the room; chest heaving, head pounding, wrist throbbing. The fact that it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think of a distance of eight feet as a journey is troubling in and of itself.

If anything the pain in his wrist is worse now. All-consuming. Sitting hurts. Breathing hurts. But at least he’s made it to the door. That’s got to count for something.

He stands awkwardly and painfully and hop-shuffles over until his hands come into contact with the knob. But the pressure of turning the knob is too much on his right wrist, he can’t get a good grip on it. The knob rattles, but he can’t tell if it doesn’t turn because it’s locked or because he’s not able to twist it hard enough. If his hands weren’t tied…

The only way to get back down to the floor is to fall to his knees, and with his hands tied he’s not able to keep himself from falling sideways after hitting the floor. He aims for his left shoulder but the jolt of impact sends new spikes of pain through his wrist regardless.

Once on the floor he rolls over onto his left side and brings his knees up to his chest, arms still behind his back, bruised ribs protesting. He works his arms down and forward, hunching his shoulders to give himself more reach, stopping every inch or so to breathe through the pain. Almost there. He stretches his arms and hunches his shoulders a bit more and finally gets his bound wrists over the curve of his arse. Something shifts in his wrist, and pain blossoms even worse than before. His vision goes darker at the edges than the already dark room, and he can’t stifle the sob that escapes his lips. He lies on his side for long minutes, breathing heavily, as if he’s just rowed a sprint, before he can bring his arms forward and around his bent legs.

He is exhausted. Far more exhausted than he should be for the amount of energy he’s expended. James spends more long minutes lying on the floor doing nothing but breathing and trying not to think about the pain. His right wrist is on fire now, throbbing with every measured breath. If it wasn’t broken before it is now. The last time he felt pain like this left him with a scar on his chin.

Finally, he’s able to sit up again. Leaning against the wall without his arms in the way is almost relaxing if he holds his wrist as still as possible. Almost.

Fuck.

Okay. Facts. Back to the facts. Dwelling on the pain isn’t going to change anything.

His shoulders hurt less. Good. His wrist hurts more. Bad. He’s still cold, though a bit less from the exertion. He’s still thirsty. He’s still hungry. He’s still tied up. All bad.

Now that his hands are in front of him he can see that the binding has cut deep grooves into his skin, and his right wrist and hand are swollen around the binding. The skin looks darker around the rope, but the light is too dim to be sure if it’s blood, or dirt, or bruising, or all three. The moon has moved from the window and everything is cast in shades of black and grey.

His wrist is throbbing with every breath, with every heartbeat, he can feel it at the pulse point where his right wrist is pressed against the left. It’s going to be difficult to drive himself out of here with only one usable hand. Assuming Eldridge hasn’t taken the car. Maybe his coat and his phone are downstairs in the room where Eldridge jumped him. He’ll have to walk until he gets somewhere with better signal. Was there another building nearby? A church near the crossroad? Not dissimilar to the one the band played in yesterday. They’ve got another gig Saturday. How is he going to play in less than a week?

No. Not helpful.

Focus on the facts. Focus on something he has some hope of changing. If he can get the rope off, wrap his wrist in something to support it. But what? His shirt? That will make him even colder. No. Go back. First things first. Untie the rope.

James turns his hands so the knot is facing him and takes a deep breath, steeling himself against the inevitable spike of pain. It takes a couple of tries, but he manages to get a good enough grip on the rope with his teeth to pull. 

It’s slow work. He has no sense of time only pull, stop, wait for the pain to subside enough to try again. Repeat. With each tug of his teeth on the rope, the pain spikes higher and never quite subsides down to the level it was previously, a constant slow build. Maybe if he waited longer between tries. But his fingers are starting to feel properly numb. He tries not to think about the damage the too tight binding may be doing.

Slowly but surely the knot loosens; so little at first that he’s not sure it isn’t wishful thinking, his pain-addled brain playing tricks on him. Then he’s able to get a better grip on the rope, to turn his wrists independently of each other, and the pressure lessens. With one last tug the rope comes away in his mouth, and he spits it out onto the floor.

James leans his head back against the wall and cradles his right arm against his chest. His wrist is still throbbing, there is a now a sharp pain that wasn’t there before he got the rope off, and an accompanying pain in his jaw and neck from tugging on the rope. He sits and breathes. He drifts off for a bit, his sleep deficit momentarily overriding the pain. Then he leans forward and begins untying the rope around his ankles. It takes almost as long to untie those bindings with one hand as the other rope did with his mouth, but at least the process doesn’t hurt as much.

Once he’s free he stretches his legs out in front of him. There is a cramp in his right calf, feeling is starting to come back to his toes, his wrist is still a world of pain.

Okay. Back to the facts. No longer tied up. Good. Still cold, still hungry, still in pain, still locked in this room. All bad.

But there is a very dim possibility he’s not locked in this room at all. Not likely, but possible. Eldridge can’t have gone through the trouble to drag him in here and tie him up and not lock the door. Unless it’s some sort of test? Another hoop for James to jump through like the drive to Beaconsfield?

James pulls his legs underneath him and pushes himself up off the floor with his left hand. His head swims, his vision goes dark, and he falls sideways, flinging his right arm out to catch himself before he can think about it. Pain sears through his wrist as his right hand connects with the floor, a wave of nausea right behind it. He doubles over, stomach heaving, and vomits bile onto the floor, wondering if he’s cracked a rib as he retches, pain shooting through his side with each spasm.

When the spasms subside he rolls over onto his back away from his own sick and stares up at the dark ceiling. Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck._ He hasn’t eaten in… he has no idea how long. Not today. Waking up on his sofa in the afternoon sun seems years away. He’d grabbed some fish and chips yesterday before the gig. More than twenty-four hours since he’s eaten? The overwhelming tiredness he’s feeling might not only be down to his sleep deficit. 

Lying on his back on the floor is not terrible if he ignores the pain and the cold. 

If only he had a blanket. If only Lewis were here to drape the blanket over him, his hands smoothing it around James’ shoulders. Lewis lying down next to him, warm and comforting, like his presence on the sofa last night. Lewis bursting through the door, come to rescue him like he did from Zoe Kenneth. The fact that Lewis didn’t know where James was then hadn’t stopped him. But James is much further away now. And if Eldridge were to find Lewis here James has no doubt he would make good on his threat of drastic measures. 

No, it’s better this way. Eldridge will come back and extract whatever revenge it is he wants from James and Lewis will remain safely elsewhere. 

Back to the facts.

No longer tied up. Still cold, still hungry, still thirsty, still in serious pain, still in this room, and now his mouth tastes foul.

Right. The water bottle, lying on its side next to the door. A full water bottle. He carefully sits up, then moves his left hand from where he’s holding his right wrist to his chest and reaches for the bottle, picking it up, then pinching it against his chest with his right elbow, and unscrewing the top with his left hand.

The water is bliss. He drinks half of it before he realises what he’s done. He should ration it, at least until he’s tried the door. Who knows how long he’s going to be in here. He puts the cap back on the bottle, drops it to the floor, and reaches up to try the door again.

It’s locked. Of course, it’s locked. It was never going to be anything but locked. But the knob is old and rattles a bit when he turns it. Possibilities then. Something to focus on.

He sits back on his heels and studies the doorknob and the lock below it. The darkness through the keyhole looks no different to the darkness in the room. If Eldridge is out there he is sitting in complete darkness. Lurking in the dark waiting to push him back down again. Minotaurs waiting in the maze. But is he in the maze? The keyhole stretches longer as he watches, if he can get his finger in there, pull it wider, pull it over the entire door. But it won’t go wider, it stays a thin line of darkness on top of darkness stretching all the way down the door to the floor. Does him no good. If he had something to pry at it… 

His head swims when he turns around, the walls moving with him, the window standing out in greater contrast to the wall’s dark undulations. Is the window lighter? He was waiting for that, wasn’t he? For something. For someone to come? Someone was supposed to be here. The minotaur led him into the maze but now he’s stuck. Dead end.

James turns again and his foot brushes the water bottle which rolls across the floor malevolently. He tries to grab it but it’s farther away than it seems. Or he’s not close enough. Or something. Something.

He turns around again and his back is against the wall which is good. He can’t see the wall move when it’s behind him. Only the wall with the window. He’s still not sure if it’s lighter or if the surrounding room is darker. But he feels lighter. His wrist feels lighter. His wrist doesn’t feel like it felt. That’s nice. His head doesn’t feel like it felt either. That’s not as nice.

His head is too heavy. This is not okay. But he’s not been sleeping. He should be, that’s what Lewis said, get some sleep. Get some proper sleep. And call Lewis in the morning. Lewis will call in the morning.


	9. Thursday very early morning

Julie Lockhart attaches herself to Robbie as he’s leaving the station, offering her help for searching Eldridge’s flat. It’s gone one in the morning so he tries to send her home, but she’s having none of it.

“I’ve been on nights the past week,” she says. “I’m used to it. You look like you could maybe do with a kip though, sir.”

“Not a chance,” Robbie says.

“I didn’t think so,” Julie says with an understanding smile. “But I had to ask.”

Eldridge’s flat is meticulously tidy. At first glance, an easy search, but two hours later they’re still at it. The whole process would likely have gone more quickly if they’d waited for SOCO, but with the on-call team already at another scene, that would have meant waiting nearly an hour to rouse a second team. Robbie wasn’t going to wait an hour before starting the search, even if he and Julie have now been at it for at least twice that long.

So far they haven’t found anything that has even the slightest connection to James or Hannah. But that pay as you go phone has to be here. Robbie saw the look on Eldridge’s face; cockiness masking fear. Eldridge said he wouldn’t find anything, but Robbie has no doubt that there is something here to find. 

“Sir,” Julie calls from the loo just as Robbie has unearthed a shoe box from the back of the bedroom cupboard. Disappointingly, it contains shoes. He abandons the box and heads down the hall. Julie is holding up a mobile covered in layers of sellotape.

“Found it taped there,” she says, pointing to the bottom of a cabinet with its drawers removed and upended on the floor. “It’s an older model, looks like a pay as you go.”

“Is there a call history?”

Julie flips the phone open and starts pressing the keys, navigating through the menus. “Only two numbers in here. One looks like Sergeant Hathaway’s.”

She hands the phone to Robbie. It is Hathaway’s number. “Do you have Hannah Eldridge’s number with you?” he asks.

“No,” Julie says. “But that one looks familiar as well.”

“We’ll confirm it back at the nick,” Robbie says and starts toward the door. Something in the bin catches his eye on the way by and he stops and bends down; a small, empty resealable bag, not dissimilar to the ones that were found in Hannah Eldridge’s purse. He pulls an evidence bag out of his pocket and puts the smaller bag into it before continuing out the door.

* * *

Back at the station, a check with the desk sergeant confirms that there is still no word from Eldridge’s lawyer. What else was he expecting at half three in the morning? Robbie sends Julie off with the mobile and resealable bag to see if there’s anyone down in forensics who can expedite tests, and stops by tech on his way to his office. He’s surprised but pleased to find Gurdip there, as far as Robbie knows Gurdip doesn’t tend to work the overnight shift.

“Any luck with the trace on Hathaway’s phone?”

“Still inconclusive,” Gurdip says, shaking his head at the screen as he types and clicks. “Which means his phone’s either switched off, out of charge, or in a dead zone.”

“Is there some way to find out where the phone was when it was on?” 

“That depends on how the carrier information is stored,” Gurdip says. “Give me a minute.” He frowns at the screen and clicks the mouse a few more times, types something, makes a quick phone call which sounds like tech gibberish to Robbie, then goes back to typing and clicking. After a few minutes of this he turns back to Robbie.

“The last tower Sergeant Hathaway’s phone pinged was near Charlbury around at 17:32 yesterday. But the phone was in motion so it’s unlikely to be there now.”

“Can you tell what direction he was going in?”

“By the previous ping, he was coming from Oxford. But other than that, no. There’s nothing after Charlbury.”

“That’s something, though,” Robbie says. “Is there any CCTV out there? Traffic cams? See if you can find anything around that time.”

“What kind of car was he driving?”

The car. Bollocks. What did become of Hathaway’s car? There is no way it was drivable even without the airbag having been triggered. How the hell did Hathaway get all the way out there?

“I don’t know,” Robbie says, and some of what he’s thinking must show on his face because Gurdip gives him a sad smile.

“Motor pool?” Gurdip suggests.

That’s it. “Can you check from here if Sergeant Hathaway signed out a car yesterday?”

“Normally, but there’s been a new PC on down there and it doesn’t look like he’s entered the log into the system yet.”

“Right,” Robbie says, turning for the door. “Thank you, Gurdip. Let me know if there’s any activity at all on Hathaway’s phone.”

“Yes, sir,” Gurdip says.

Sure enough, Hathaway’s signature is there in the motor pool log. He signed out a car at 14:57, well before the time his phone pinged the tower by Charlbury. What was he doing in the meantime? Robbie rings Gurdip, gives him the make and model of the car, and asks him to check cameras between Oxford and Charlbury, as well as trace the movements of Hathaway’s phone between signing out the car and the last ping. Maybe knowing where Hathaway had been will give him a clue as to where he is.

Heading back to the office Robbie stops halfway through the door, his gaze catching on Hathaway’s empty desk. If this were any other case Hathaway would be hunched over his desk, scrutinising files, waiting for him. Robbie sighs and sits down at his own desk, suddenly exhausted now that he’s stopped moving. 

He finds the correct folder in the stack on his desk and confirms that the other number in the call list of the pay as you go phone is Hannah’s. Then he begins carefully combing through all the folders from Hathaway’s flat and the Hannah Eldridge case files for any connection he’s missed; trying to keep himself busy while he’s waiting for a sliver of information that will tell him where Hathaway is, or Innocent’s call letting him back into the interview room with Eldridge.

* * *

Robbie wakes to his phone trilling next to his head. _Callout,_ his brain supplies before he remembers the events of the previous day and registers the fact that he’s fallen asleep at his desk on top of the open case files. He fumbles the phone in his haste, dropping it to the floor still ringing before finally picking it up and answering. Eldridge’s lawyer is on his way. As soon as he rings off his desk phone rings. It’s Innocent summoning him, and the case files he hopefully hasn’t drooled on, to her office to finish bringing Grainger up to speed.

The thin light of dawn is just beginning to creep through the windows, he must have been asleep at his desk for at least a couple of hours. It feels wrong to have slept while James is out there somewhere, possibly injured. But Innocent has had half the force out looking for him most of the night. Nothing Robbie could have been doing on his own for the past couple of hours could top that. And once Grainger is up to speed Robbie is going back into the interview room with Eldridge and Eldridge is going to tell him where James is whether he likes it or not.

* * *

Grainger stops Robbie in the corridor as they’re about to enter the interview room.

“I know you don’t want me here,” he says. “I wouldn’t want you in the way if it was my sergeant who was in trouble. But I won’t step in unless it looks absolutely necessary or if you want me to.”

“Cheers,” Robbie says. “I’ll owe you one,” and opens the door.

Eldridge looks surprisingly relaxed for someone who spent the night in a cell, sitting in his chair as if it was a lounger by the sea. He flashes Robbie an overconfident grin as Robbie steps through the door. Grainger pulls out the chair across from Eldridge’s lawyer and sits, leaning back with his arms crossed in front of his chest, making good on his promise to let Robbie take the lead despite what Innocent said back in her office.

Robbie sits down opposite Eldridge and lays everything out on the table, one piece of evidence at a time, watching Eldridge’s reaction to each item out of the corner of his eye. The three letters, back from forensics with no fingerprint matches save for his and Hathaway’s—but with the rest of it, the information they contain is damning enough. The photos of himself and Hathaway. The four envelopes. The pay as you go phone, also back from forensics and covered with Eldridge’s fingerprints. Printouts of the call records for the phone showing both Hannah and Hathaway’s numbers. Printouts of Hannah’s phone records and bank statements showing matched pairs of phone calls and cashpoint withdrawals. And the empty resealable bag, also back from forensics, with residue of the same drug cocktail as the others found in Hannah’s purse.

With each item, Eldridge loses a bit more of his facade of relaxation. Robbie does his best not to smile each time it happens.

“Do you have anything to say about any of this?” Robbie asks once everything is laid out.

Eldridge shakes his head. A sure sign that Robbie’s got him cornered.

“Let me take you through it, then. You moved to Oxford two months ago after Nachmann cut you out of the business and your fiancé chucked you, knowing that your second cousin Hannah was in her final year at Merton and that her parents had set her up with a hefty trust fund while they were out of the country.

“You went by her flat to ask her for money, no doubt appealing to her as a family member fallen on hard times. She took pity on you and gave you some cash.” Robbie points to the first highlighted cashpoint withdrawal a week before the beginning of the regular calls to Hannah.

“But she wasn’t as keen on helping you out a second time. Smelled a rat, I’d bet. She told you to get lost but you kept coming back. One of her flatmates saw you hanging around, and you managed to weasel some information out of him about Hannah’s work. Namely, that she was giving some of the drugs she was manufacturing for her thesis to other students. The perfect opportunity, wasn’t it? If she wouldn’t give you the money willingly she’d certainly give it to you under threat of being sent down in her final year. Any of this sound familiar?”

Eldridge doesn’t give any indication one way or another, but Robbie takes that as a yes.

“You’ve called Hannah multiple times a week for the past two months. Two to three-minute calls. Not long enough for much of a chat, but long enough to set up a meeting place. Each call was followed by a cash withdrawal from Hannah’s trust account. Combined with your lack of employment and the cash you were flashing around in The Moonlight Room that’s rather telling. Add to that the fact that Hannah only ever texted and never answered her phone or made calls, and it’s downright suspicious.”

Eldridge still doesn’t react.

“But the piece I can’t reconcile is what changed last week. If, as you say in your letters, Sergeant Hathaway is to blame for everything that’s happened to you, why wait until then to start harassing him? Were you raising capital? Did Hannah decide she’d had enough of you, so you thought you’d try Sergeant Hathaway next? What was in that fourth letter? Where is Sergeant Hathaway? And if Hannah was still paying up why kill her?”

Eldridge’s facade of relaxation has completely slipped away now. He looks like he might seriously be considering making a run for it.

“What do you mean ‘kill her’? I didn’t kill her.”

Robbie is sure that Eldridge avoiding the topic of Hathaway is a deliberate delaying tactic, but he looks like he genuinely didn’t know that Hannah was dead. Robbie has no doubt that Eldridge was blackmailing her and that he is the reason she was out by the boathouse. Even if he didn’t kill her himself, Eldridge’s actions contributed to the circumstances of her death. And Eldridge looks rattled. Good. 

“Hannah was found dead early Monday morning by the Queen’s College boathouse.”

“Oh,” Eldridge says. He looks at his lawyer, then back at Robbie.

“When did you last see her?” Robbie asks.

Eldridge looks toward his lawyer again, who leans over and whispers something in his ear. Eldridge whispers something back and the lawyer nods at him, a gesture that broaches no argument. Eldridge looks defeated, deflated. He turns back to Robbie.

“I saw her late Sunday night, around two. At the boathouse. We met there sometimes.”

“So she could hand over the blackmail money?”

Eldridge nods.

“Say it out loud for the tape.”

“I met Hannah at the boathouse so she could give me the money she owed me.”

“Because you were blackmailing her.”

Eldridge sighs. “Because I was blackmailing her.”

“What happened after she gave you the money?”

“She left and I left.”

“That’s the whole story? You saw her walk away from the boathouse?”

“Well I—” The lawyer leans over and whispers in Eldridge’s ear. Eldridge nods and turns back to Robbie.

“We met up at the boathouse, on the landing. She was on the way to the lab. She’d been working on a new formula, so I knew she’d been testing.”

“Testing the drugs you mean?”

“Yes, with her mates. She gave me the money and she said it was really the last time. She’d said it was the last time before, but she always came through in the end if I pushed it a bit. So, I said if she wasn’t going give me money she’d better give me some of the drugs. But the drugs were for her thesis, not to be sold, she said. Infuriating. I never even told her I was going to sell them. And she was giving them to other students, but she wouldn’t give them to me. I insisted, and she gave me the one baggie she had on her but kept saying that was the last. No more money, no more drugs.

“And I— She was ruining everything. She turned to go and I grabbed her arm. It was raining and the stairs were slippery. I guess I slipped when I grabbed her, and she slipped too, or she was trying to get away, but we both fell. I didn’t mean to push her, but I lost my balance. I almost fell down the stairs too. She hit her head pretty hard on the railing and then got up and walked down the rest of the stairs. She was screaming at me to get away from her. So, I did.”

“You left her there bleeding and alone in the middle of the night.”

“She told me to leave.”

“And you didn’t think to call 999?”

“No. It was dark. I didn’t see any blood. She walked away.”

“Or you didn’t want anyone to question why you were both at the boathouse in the middle of the night. The drugs reacted with the blow to the head. If you had called 999 she’d likely still be alive.”

“Oh.” Eldridge looks stricken.

“Yeah, oh.”

“Sergeant Hathaway,” Eldridge says. He looks genuinely distressed now.

“What about Sergeant Hathaway?”

“If I knew something about where he was and that he might be in danger would I get leniency for telling you?”

“Not if you were the cause of that danger.”

The lawyer leans toward Eldridge, speaking for the first time at a volume that Robbie can hear. “If you have information that could lead to harm coming to an officer of the law if not divulged I advise you to divulge it.”

Eldridge gives the lawyer a dark look.

“The case for your defence will go better if you give the information freely,” the lawyer says.

Eldridge slumps in his chair, the picture of defeat. “Sergeant Hathaway is in Witney,” he says. “Charlbury House. In the attic. Tied up. He was unconscious when I left, but I didn’t hit him as hard as Hannah hit her head. There’s a bottle of water in the room dosed with Hannah’s drugs.”

“You left him drugged water?”

“He’s always so put together. It was just too amusing, the thought of him waking up and drinking the water, not knowing he’d been drugged and then starting to hallucinate. I was looking forward to seeing how he dealt with thinking he was going mad.”

Bastard. “You said he was tied up. Was your plan to go back and force feed him the water?”

“If I had to. He’s resourceful, though. I bet he’s found a way to drink it with his hands tied. I’m just sorry I’m going to miss the show.”

Robbie is leaning forward over the table toward Eldridge before he realises what he’s doing. Grainger clears his throat, and Robbie sits back in his chair. He looks over at Grainger who raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything.

Eldridge is smirking at him when Robbie looks back across the table.

“How long has Sergeant Hathaway been out there?” Robbie asks.

“Since around six yesterday.”

“Before you arrived at The Moonlight Room?”

“Yes.”

“What were you doing coming back to Oxford while Sergeant Hathaway was out in Witney?”

“I had to—”

“You know what, never mind,” Robbie interrupts. “I don’t care. What’s the address for Charlbury House?”

“It’s been abandoned for years. I’m not sure it ever had one.”

“Directions then,” Robbie growls, pushing his notebook and pen toward Eldridge. “Write them down.”

There are GPS coordinates written on the page when Robbie takes the notebook back.

“Right,” Robbie says, then turns to Grainger. “He’s all yours.”

Robbie barely restrains himself from running at full speed down the corridor, and almost barrels into Innocent and Gurdip as he’s coming up the stairs.

“Where’s the fire?” Innocent yells after him.

He slows and turns, still moving toward the door. “Got a lead on Hathaway. Abandoned house out in Witney called Charlbury House. It’s got to be just past that ping, Gurdip. I’ll need an ambulance out there.”

Robbie hears Innocent say, “Robbie wait,” and then to Gurdip, “What ping?” and then he’s out the door.


	10. Thursday morning

James doesn’t wake so much as swim up from the depths of a cold, dark sea. Above the sea, there is pain and dim light. Daylight through a window that hasn’t been washed in years. He feels like he hasn’t washed in years. He feels hungover. His head is pounding and his mouth is a desert, drier even than before he drank the water. 

The water. Eldridge drugged the water. What did Dr Hobson say about the drugs Hannah Eldridge was making and head injuries? Hannah likely would have lived if she hadn’t hit her head, would have woken later with a pounding headache. Eldridge hit him over the head. Has he been dosed with the same drug? Possible. Plausible. Had Eldridge meant to kill Hannah? Did Eldridge mean for him to die in this room?

Fuck.

His head feels wrong. Everything feels wrong. The pain in his wrist is radiating out, he can see it pulsing, a thin fog of angry red and magenta around his arm. Shit. Still drugs in his system, then. James takes as deep a breath as he can before his ribs protest, and wills the visual manifestation of the pain to go away. It mostly works. 

By the brightness of the window it’s day now, but it could be mid-morning or early evening for all he can tell through the layers of dirt. He has to have been here at least half a day, though. 

“Eldridge!” James shouts, not really expecting an answer. All he gets for his trouble is a more insistent throbbing at his temples.

Lewis must be looking for him by now. Is that what Eldridge is waiting for? Lewis to arrive so he can torture him in front of James? It doesn’t bear thinking about. And there’s nothing he can do besides. He’s got no phone, he’s locked in this room.

So, think about something else. Like getting out. 

James sits up from his slouch against the wall and kneels in front of the door. Now that the effects of the drugs have lessened the keyhole is the expected size and shape. It looks like an ordinary door, if in a state of disrepair; four-panelled wood, layers of flaking paint, simple metal knob with a keyhole beneath it. If he had two good wrists and something thin and metal he could pick the lock. The view through the keyhole reveals a large room with a ceiling that slopes away from him, empty save for the plaster and flaking wallpaper littering the floor. The decorator is consistent.

He tries the door. The knob rattles encouragingly but doesn’t budge. Maybe if he gets his back against it. Judging by the hinges the door swings in, but if he hits it hard enough it’s possible he’ll be able to loosen the latch, or the hinges, or make a hole in it. The entire room, door included, seems brittle with age and easily breakable.

James’ head swims as he gets up by slow increments; first to his knees, then leaning against the wall for support once he’s upright. He doesn’t fall and he doesn’t vomit. Small victories. He tries to ignore the way the peeling wallpaper waves at him like seaweed in an ocean current when he turns his head, and leans against the door waiting for the dizziness to pass. His hands are shaking which only serves to make the throb in his right wrist worse. 

Standing up fully, James takes a step back from the door, steels himself, and slams his left shoulder against it as hard as he can. His vision goes dark around the edges as the pain in his head and wrist spikes, but the wave of accompanying nausea isn’t so much that he can’t breathe through it. 

He tries again. And again. And again. The third time knocks plaster and paper off the near wall peppering him with dust and sending him into a coughing fit. The door remains stubbornly intact while he struggles to catch his breath. The fifth time the pain is so intense it sends him to his knees dry heaving onto the dirty floor. He doesn’t bother standing up again, just crawls over to the wall, slumping against it. He closes his eyes, trying to calm his breath, to get the pain back to a somewhat manageable level. He is at least somewhat warmer for all his exertion. But he’s fucking exhausted. 

Long minutes pass. Maybe more than minutes. Maybe a lot of minutes. He is thirsty again. Or still. More thirsty than when he woke up. Dehydration is likely preferable to being drugged, but the drugs did ease the pain for a bit. Or at least make him less aware of it.

Okay. Focus on something else. Back to the facts. 

In the thin daylight he can see the full dimensions of the room. The walls are no less strange than they were in the dark. Even now that the drug-induced waves have calmed down, the peeling wallpaper still looks like some sort of strange marine plant life. There are places where the plaster beneath has sloughed off completely, exposing the lath underneath, like ribs. Lath. Related to the German latte. A coffee might ease this pounding headache some. Or a cigarette. Don’t think about that. 

Assess the evidence, Hathaway. 

Okay, the room. Low ceiling crisscrossed with dark wood beams, one grimy window, the small table he’d woken up underneath the first time, the door to his right. There’s the drugged water and the two ropes that were binding his hands and feet. Save for the bits of plaster and wallpaper that litter the floor, there’s nothing else in the room. The window is hardly large enough to fit through, the door has defeated him. And even so, the way he’s feeling he’s not sure he’d make it down the stairs let alone down the long drive to the road.

“Are you happy, Eldridge?” James shouts. “I admit it. You got the better of me. I didn’t see this coming.” He waits, listening for the sound of footsteps in on the stairs. There’s nothing.

“Where the fuck are you, you bastard? What happened to face to face?” Still nothing. This is madness. Oh. That could be the point. Lock him up and leave him with no heat, and no food, and only drugged water, and see how long it takes him to lose it. With the broken wrist he gives himself another six hours if he’s lucky. The pain is only tolerable if he sits completely still, and there’s a disconcerting new sharp pain in his left side since he tried to break down the door. 

But concentrating on the pain is not helpful. Concentrate on something else. 

There is a buzzing from the opposite corner of the room by the window. The buzzing moves closer. It’s a fly. He watches it wheel around the room bumping off the walls and the window as if looking for weaknesses. 

“You find a way out, you let me know,” James says to the fly. It buzzes away into the far corner, then silence. Has it been here the whole time? Is there a hole in the window? It’s cold enough that there could be. He can’t tell from here and it’s not worth the effort to go over there and look. Everything is cold except his right wrist which is on fire. An alien appendage made of pain while the rest of him shivers. He tries to keep his arm still against his chest but his shivering keeps jostling it. 

He’s not going to make it six hours. Does he have a concussion? If he drinks the water will it knock him out again? Will he wake up? He pulls his knees up to his chest and hugs them with his left arm to try to conserve what little warmth he’s got. It doesn’t help much. 

Fuck. He can’t think through the pain, and this is definitely a situation in which thinking would be helpful. 

For all he knows he’s been here for more than a day already. Which means Lewis is definitely looking for him. He’d have gone to James’ flat and found the photos. But the letter was in his coat. Lewis would have gone looking for Eldridge at The Moonlight Room. But Eldridge was here. Maybe Lewis did find Eldridge. Maybe he’s right now squeezing a confession out of him. Maybe he already has and is on his way here. Maybe it doesn’t matter that James can’t get himself out of this room on his own. 

Maybe if he wasn’t an idiot with a soft spot for his boss so big that criminals can see it he wouldn’t be in this mess. Lewis was right that James should know better, that he knows the proper way to handle a situation like this. And he let Eldridge goad him into haring off into the middle of nowhere. Eldridge had him sussed from the beginning. Threaten Lewis and James will do whatever he says. Pathetic. Even more pathetic if Lewis doesn’t find him soon and he dies here. 

But he’s not going to die. He’s in pain but he’s not bleeding. It takes at least three days to die of dehydration and he’s got water, even if it is drugged. It won’t take Lewis three days to find him. And he knows, beyond a doubt, that Lewis will find him. Because even if Lewis’ affection for James runs more toward familial than James wants it to, it is there and Lewis always takes care of his own.

James sighs and tries to find a more comfortable position against the wall. There isn’t one and he only succeeds in ratcheting up the pain in his wrist. Tears of frustration prickle at the corner of his eyes. Fucking hell it hurts. He just wants the pain to stop. If he starts sobbing it’s only going to make his ribs hurt more. 

The water bottle has rolled to his left toward the corner of the room. It’s the only painkiller he’s got. 

If he drank the drugged water before and he woke up, then chances are if he drinks more he’ll wake up a second time as well. There is a tender lump at the spot on the back of his head where Eldridge hit him, but no blood that he can feel. Not anywhere near as hard a blow as Hannah sustained. 

He makes an awkward limping crawl over to the bottle with his right arm held to his chest. Everything hurts more by the time he gets there. The water feels as good on his dry tongue as it did the first time, but he only lets himself drink a few sips. 

James settles down in the corner of the room with his back to the wall perpendicular to the door, pulls his knees up to his chest, and leans over into the corner, his right arm cradled between his knees and chest. The pain becomes more distant, then the walls begin to move again, the waves random at first, coming in from all sides at all angles, then syncing up, the whole room undulating like a giant jellyfish in time with his breathing. He closes his eyes against it.

* * *

There is a sound. And another. Not a buzzing this time. Not the fly. The sound again. A scraping, a thump, possibly a faraway voice. James waits, holding his breath. The walls move differently with each sound. He can’t be sure if any of it is real. If someone has come. If that someone is Eldridge. Or Lewis.

Lewis. Pushing through the crumbling hallway below, checking every door as he passes. Searching for James and finding nothing, calling out his name. Moving on to the first floor and doing the same. It is a simple maze but it must be checked thoroughly. Lewis reaching the stairs to the attic, finding the door to this room, breaking it down and taking James in his arms. Carrying him out like he did once before. But this time James will be awake to remember, to feel Lewis’ arms around him, holding him, to hold on. 

There is another scraping, a creak. Is Lewis out there or is it the minotaur stirring in the maze? The walls heave, closing in. James doesn’t turn around to look at the wall he’s leaning against to see if it is consuming him. It could be. He watches the door. It will be lost to the wall soon, the waves breaking over it.

The scraping is outside the door now, almost like footsteps, feet catching on the crumbled plaster and strips of fallen wallpaper. The steps are coming closer. Lewis. Or the minotaur come to put an end to him. He should move to the other side of the room, get the table between himself and the door. But his legs won’t do what he wants. Too cold. He stays as still as possible as the door handle rattles, the door swells, a wave crashing from top to bottom and then splits, opening into the room. A hand on the doorknob, a face above it as the figure moves into the room.

“Sir?” James croaks. His voice has left him along with his ability to discern reality from hallucination. This is what he wants, what he’s hoped for, but it can’t be. He never gets what he wants. It could be the minotaur in disguise and he’s just revealed himself.

Lewis moves too quickly. He’s at the door and then he’s kneeling in front of James. His face looks odd. Wet. Worried. His hand is touching James’ arm below the sleeve of his t-shirt. His fingers are warm, like a brand.

“You’re freezing, lad,” Lewis says. He rubs his hand up and down James’ bare arm then sits back, and he’s pulling James forward, wrapping him in fabric and warmth that smells of Lewis. His anorak. Does that mean this really is Lewis? 

Everything goes watery, different to the waves in the walls. James tries not to gasp when pain shoots through his wrist and arm, tries to stop everything going more watery. Lewis is saying something, pulling James to him. James can’t help but lean in, face and left shoulder to Lewis’ warm chest, cradled in Lewis’ arms, trying to breathe through the relief that’s choking him.

The soothing rumble of Lewis’ voice washes over James in tantalising snippets. “On their way… scared me… don’t know what I’d do… if I lost you…” Drug-addled wishful thinking. Lewis only feels that way about James in his head at night when he’s alone. 

But he can feel Lewis’ arms around him. Do hallucinations have mass? Can this really be Lewis? Shrouding him in warmth and comforting words, holding him close, running soothing hands along his back, pressing a tentative kiss to the top of his head.

Lewis is so close, and James wants nothing more than to be even closer. There was a reason not to do this. Not to lean into the touch that may well only be trying to warm him and nothing else. Not to turn his head and press a kiss to Lewis’ neck. The reasons are flimsy, papery things drifting away on the waves. 

James raises his head and Robbie’s face is right there. All he has to do is lean in a bit more. Press their lips together. Robbie presses back. Kisses back. And James is warm, even down to his frigid fingers. His toes. Warm all over. For the first time since he woke up in this room he feels something other pain and cold; an intoxicating, invigorating warmth. He pushes away the thought that a feeling of warmth after such sustained cold is a sign of late-stage hypothermia. Robbie’s hand is cradling his head, the other low on his back, pulling them closer together, Robbie’s lips and tongue moving against James’ own, breathing life back into him.

* * *

James is warm. Everything is warm. He’s lying on something soft, covered with something else soft. He can hear a subtle whirring machine noise, the murmur of a quiet conversation somewhere, footsteps passing. He opens his eyes.

The ceiling is clean, beige, fluorescent lights switched off, the curtains on the window drawn. It feels like his head’s been stuffed with candy floss. No, that’s not right. Cotton wool. Possibly both. Everything, including his own legs, seems very far away, like he’s seeing the world through a fuzzy tunnel. It’s not an unpleasant feeling. There is no pain in his head, or his ribs, or his wrist, though his wrist is stiff and immobile. He lifts his head a fraction to look down at his arm. A cast. He did break it after all. 

He turns his head. He is in a bed, a tall bed. A hospital bed. Beside the bed is a chair with Robbie Lewis asleep in it, head lolling to the side in a way that looks likely to give him a crick in the neck. His suit is rumpled, dirt on his trousers and shirt cuffs, tie loose around his neck. He looks like he’s been there for a while. 

Robbie. 

Robbie did find him. That was him in the attic, kneeling on the floor with James, wrapping James in his anorak. Kissing him. And somehow now he is here as well. Robbie wouldn’t be here, in the room with him, not three feet away, if the kiss hadn’t been something he wanted. Would he? Does James dare even hope? 

James looks over at Robbie again. His sleeping form gives no clues as to whether he’s here out of obligation or by choice. Whether he is going to wake up, and seeing that James is all right and his duty done, leave the room. Leave James’ life. Whether James’ moment of weakness has opened a chasm between them that they won’t be able to traverse. 

Robbie shifts in the chair, trying to get comfortable no doubt, and opens his eyes. His face brightens when his gaze falls on James. 

“Good morning,” Robbie says, voice tinged with affection and genuine happiness, not a hint of reservation. If James wasn’t already warm the smile Robbie gives him would finish the job. Hope unfurls in his chest. 

“You’re here,” James says his voice no more than a whisper. 

“Of course I am,” Robbie says, sitting up and pulling the chair closer to the bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Good,” James says automatically and finds it’s actually true. He feels relaxed despite being in a hospital bed with no memory of how he got here. But Robbie is here. And when did he start thinking of Lewis as Robbie? Sometime around the time he snogged a suspected hallucination? Sometime around the time Robbie kissed him back? 

“That’s twice now,” James says. 

“What’s twice?” Robbie asks, leaning closer.

“You saved my life.”

“Give over. You’d’ve done the same to for me.” That’s true, but not the point. 

Robbie shifts in his chair leaning even closer, his hand resting on the edge of the bed like an invitation. James only has to move his hand two inches to grasp Robbie’s. There is no hesitation about Robbie’s returning touch, gripping James’ hand in his and giving it a firm squeeze. 

“I thought I’d lost you,” Robbie says, voice gone quiet. 

James doesn’t know how to respond to the raw emotion in his voice. So he blurts out the first thing that comes to mind.

“I kissed you.”

“You did,” Robbie says, still smiling at him.

“I didn’t— I didn’t intend it to go like that.”

“You had intentions, did you?”

“More like hopes. But that was real? This is real?”

“Aye, lad.”

“Thank God,” James says, relief crashing over him. They really did kiss and Robbie is still here, holding his hand of all things, gazing at him with unmistakable affection. James takes a deep breath to keep from being overwhelmed. Robbie squeezes his hand again. 

“I have to ask,” Robbie says. “You did— You kissed me— But you were in no fit state, and I—”

“You didn’t take advantage of me,” James says as firmly as he can. “I may have been drugged and hypothermic but that doesn’t change how I feel. It doesn’t change how I have felt.” James takes a deep breath. “If that’s what it took to get us here,” he raises their joined hands, “I would do it all again.”

Robbie looks as shocked at James’ frank confession as James feels. Whatever they’ve given him for the pain seems to have left some rather large holes in his carefully constructed defences. He finds he’s okay with that. 

Robbie lets out a fond but exasperated sigh. “Still, going off like that without a word. What were you thinking?”

“I think you know,” James says. 

“Aye, I suppose I do,” Robbie says, sounding reluctant to admit it. “How long have you—”

“A long time,” James says with a sigh. He looks up at the ceiling then back at Robbie who is gazing at him with a look of suppressed awe.

“And I didn’t see it.” Robbie shakes his head. “Some detective I am.”

“I didn’t want you to. Never thought you’d feel the same.” 

“I suppose I didn’t at first,” Robbie says. “But after Eldridge sabotaged your brakes— The possibility that he might actually do you serious harm— And then I couldn’t find you—”

“I’m sorry,” James says, squeezing Robbie’s hand. “I never meant— He threatened you, and I couldn’t— I couldn’t let anything happen to you. Not when there was something I could do to prevent it.”

“I never wanted you to sacrifice yourself for me.”

“I know,” James says, looking down at their hands to avoid the look of admonishment that must be on Robbie’s face. 

“James,” Robbie says. “I don’t like it, but do understand. Why you would. I’d do the same for you.”

James looks up at Robbie then, their eyes meeting. “How about we don’t, though. Do that. Either of us,” he says. 

“Deal,” Robbie says. Then he leans in slowly, as if he’s giving James a chance to put a stop to it, and plants a gentle kiss on James’ lips. James lets go of Robbie’s hand as he’s pulling away and cups the back of his neck before he can get too far, pulling Robbie closer, biting at his bottom lip and grinning at the stifled moan that escapes Robbie’s lips, before deepening the kiss. James wants nothing more than to pull Robbie onto the bed with him and take this to its logical conclusion. 

There is the sound of someone clearing their throat from behind Robbie and they break apart, Robbie quickly sitting back in his chair and pushing it away from the bed a few inches.

The nurse looks both amused and annoyed. “You’ve had quite a shock to your system,” she says. “Strenuous activity should be avoided for at least 48 hours.”

“We weren’t—” 

She points to the heart rate monitor by James’ bedside, noticeably elevated from what it was when he first woke up. 

“Ah,” James says.

“I am glad to see you’re feeling better,” she says with an indulgent smile as she leaves the room.

“I guess we’ve been told,” Robbie says. If James isn’t mistaken his cheeks are pinker than they were before.

“Yeah,” James says and lays his head back down on the pillow. The nurse was probably right, he does feel rather tired now, even after only one kiss. He lets his eyes drift closed for a few minutes, then opens them again.

He looks over at Robbie. “You’ll still be here when I wake up, right?”

“Of course,” Robbie says, grabbing hold of James’ hand again. “Nowhere else I’d rather be.”

___


End file.
